[Mailman-Users] Has anyone successfully installed Mailman onFedora Core 2?

[Stephen J. Turnbull]

>>>>> "Brad" == Brad Knowles <brad at stop.mail-abuse.org> writes:

At 1:03 PM +0900 2004-11-30, Stephen J. Turnbull wrote:

>    AC_CHECK_HEADER(Python.h, , got_python_h=yes)])
>    if test $got_python_h != yes -a $os = linux; then
>      echo 'If you're on Linux, you have the "binary distro no -devel
> rpm" bug!'
>      echo 'Switch to an Industrial-Strength OS such as NetBSD immediately!'
>      echo 'Gentoo Linux will do, too.'

    Brad> 	But then you have to do this for every OS in
    Brad> existence.  You'd have to wrap a conditional of this sort
    Brad> around every single file that building Mailman might
    Brad> require, but which is not included as part of Mailman
    Brad> itself.

Of course you don't.  The point is to test for one specific kind of
brain damage that is well-known, very common, and even bites people
who know what they're doing, not to mention being very confusing for
newbies.  You can leave out the test for Linux, and simply say "If you
don't even have Python.h, you probably are missing many, many files
required to build Mailman.  Perhaps your OS has separate 'development'
packages?"

The problem is not to build a fool-proof safety net; I'll put my money
on the fool, every time.  The point is to forestall one particular FAQ.

    Brad> 	I'm sorry, but this is a totally non-scalable
    Brad> suggestion.  If all we had to do was to support a single OS,
    Brad> that would be fine.  But we can't do everyone's job for
    Brad> them, and if the RPM builders want to have multiple
    Brad> different versions of Python (or whatever else Mailman might
    Brad> depend on), then they need to take the responsibility of
    Brad> dealing with the resulting issues.

Wishful thinking.  By allocating the headers to the devel packages,
they've already indicated that in their opinion it's somebody else's
problem.

I dunno what Messrs. Warsaw et cie. think, but in my experience this
kind of hacking pays of in noticably reduced user frustration and
somewhat reduced FAQmeister effort.

-- 
Institute of Policy and Planning Sciences     http://turnbull.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp
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