[Geany-Users] I want to run a c program on Prisoner's Dilemma in Geany but can't

[Colomban Wendling]

Hi,

Le 23/07/2014 13:19, Rajib Bandopadhyay a écrit :
> [...]
> ...
> Install Geany-Plugins
> There are different ways to get the Geany-Plugins project onto your
> system. The easiest is to ask the package manager software of the
> distribution you are using.
> ...
> 
> This approach has led me to a complicated situation. Instead of
> focussing on the task at hand I am now trying to get Geany fixed.

IIUC, you tried to install the Debian packages on Knoppix.  Even if a
distribution is Debian-based doesn't mean any Debian package will work
seamlessly on it.  Using a package not specifically crafted for your
very distribution is a risky bet if you don't know your package manager
*very* well.  It might work, but it also might not (e.g. if versions of
dependencies differ).

I also think I understood you manually installed the packages rather
than adding a repository.  This is even more tricky as your package
manager can't install dependencies itself if they are not in one of its
repositories, so you have to *manually* make sure all the specific
packages are installed.  E.g. if you manually installed
geany-plugin-scope from Debian, you need to make sure you also manually
install geany-plugins-common at the very same version, and that you have
a Geany package providing geany-abi-69.

> I again draw your attention to Geany's USP, "...Another goal was to be as
> independent as possible from a special Desktop Environment like KDE or
> GNOME - Geany only requires the GTK2 runtime libraries..."

We do.  But we cannot realistically test Geany on each and every
existing distribution, there are too many of them and there is no reason
for us to doubt Geany won't work on a GNU/Linux platform.

We would of course be happy to have report of code problems on different
platforms if any, but as Lex said, as we don't create the packages for
the various distributions we don't know what they did specifically.

> So how come Geany gets to depend on so many packages and breaks
> them(snapshots)? ;)

Well, that's the difference between build dependencies and package
dependencies -- and here as you're talking about a specific plugin
(which is *not* part of Geany itself), of that very plugin's own
dependencies.

Geany itself only requires GTK2 (to a minimal specific version) and a
conforming libc.  However, the distribution packages generally have a
tighter dependency list, especially if the upstream package is split in
various distribution packages.  This is because not only the
distribution's packaging system has to provide the softwares but also
make sure the system state remains consistent.

> I hope you would weigh the points I have raised.
> 
> And your email does not address my other issue: "There must be a
> system of specific configuration where the developers test their
> codes."
> What is the specific system you all use? Let me know and I will set up
> the same system to minimise fuss.

We don't have such specific system: some of us use Debian, some other
Xubuntu or Fedora, etc.  But this doesn't matter much as I'm talking
about Geany developers that obviously build Geany from sources themselves.

> But first of all, I would compile the software from the source code
> and try to solve the issues. Let's see how this goes :)

This should avoid any packaging system issues, and building Geany is
relatively easy -- at least if you already know how to build an
Autotools-using software.

Regards,
Colomban