[Live-demo] Rethinking osgeo-live

Thu Oct 25 14:07:47 PDT 2012

Barry,
An interesting idea you have brought up.
Here are some thoughts that Jody Garnett mentioned in IRC today...

<jgarnett> there is a slightly different approach to consider
<jgarnett> if you look at things like "home brew"
<kalxas> but I don't believe it fits the way GNU/Linux works
<jgarnett> they are very similar to what osgeo live does
<jgarnett> osgeo live has a bunch of tested install scripts
<jgarnett> that "grab what is needed"
<jgarnett> we have caught developers just running the scripts on their 
linux machine
<jgarnett> (and indeed they sometimes work for mac as well)
<jgarnett> home brew, and its ports to linux, are similar
<jgarnett> would turn the project into a set of install scripts
<CameronShorter> jgarnett, got a url for home brew?
<jgarnett> the "live demo" would be a downstream project; where the 
install scripts have been applied to a ISO
<jgarnett> or to a VM
<jgarnett> http://mxcl.github.com/homebrew/
<sigabrt> Title: Homebrew — MacPorts driving you to drink? Try Homebrew! 
(at mxcl.github.com)
<jgarnett> (it is not so much this specific "home-brew" project - it is 
the approach that is similar to the core of osgeo live)
<jgarnett> (i.e. the part we ask projects to maintain)
<jgarnett> but yeah - was not going to wade into that email debate
<jgarnett> (here is a port of homebrew to linux 
http://blog.frameos.org/2010/11/10/mac-homebrew-ported-to-linux/ )
<sigabrt> Title: Mac Homebrew ported to Linux - Automation Inc. (at 
blog.frameos.org)
<kalxas> "Caveats * The port is still a work in progress * Most of the 
existing haven’t been tested. * Port has been tested only in Ubuntu and 
RHEL"

On 25/10/2012 7:26 PM, Angelos Tzotsos wrote:
> And something I forgot to write down:
>
> What about security updates? We would need to maintain libraries like 
> Qt, while this is done upstream right now.
>
> Best,
> Angelos
>
> On 10/25/2012 11:16 AM, Angelos Tzotsos wrote:
>> Hi Barry,
>>
>> On 10/25/2012 10:29 AM, Barry Rowlingson wrote:
>>> On 25 October 2012 03:33, Brian Hamlin <maplabs at light42.com> wrote:
>>>> this is breathtakingly unrealistic :-)
>>> Thanks! :)
>>>
>>> I'll approach some of the criticisms...
>>>
>>> * Alex, yes, correctly compiling Windows things is hard. But someone
>>> has done it for OSGeo4W, Jo has done it for Portable GIS. That
>>> expertise exists.
>>>
>>> * Alex, Angelos: this wouldn't be statically linked binaries
>>> (HUUUUGE!) but more like a python virtual env. There would be some
>>> wrapper to make sure qgis always links with /osgeo/lib/libqt4.so, and
>>> never with /usr/lib/libqt4.so. Essentially it would be everything that
>>> is currently on the live disc (except the kernel and user tools), with
>>> the applications configured to get their dependencies from the right
>>> place.
>> I see what you mean, I am not sure it is wise to bypass 
>> distributions. How many software providers do this today?
>> Even Google with all those resources available has not been able to 
>> provide one binary for all Linux machines...
>>
>> We would need to re-invent the wheel in some cases to do this.
>> But this does not mean I don't like the way you are thinking.
>>>
>>> * Angelos: I demand (and get) freedom for my desktop, at the cost of
>>> not having central IT back my machine up. However, if I take a live
>>> DVD to a Windows-using, central-IT supported colleagues desk and go
>>> 'hey, look at this', all I get is frustration and eventually a BIOS
>>> password prompt. So I then have to go back with OSGeo4W.
>> Unfortunately freedom is still an every-day battle.
>> At least we are winning on the server side.
>>>
>>> * Angelos: running in your favourite OS should be as simple as
>>> copying the things you want to run to your currently existing and
>>> configured-exactly-how-you-like-it OS.
>> I know packaging is not perfect today, but is much better than it 
>> used to be 5 or 10 years back.
>>> I don't see the point in making
>>> an openSUSE version - we're trying to promote OSGeo s/w here, not
>>> GNU/Linux distributions.
>> This is exactly why this version is not available...
>>>
>>> I'm just thinking that there's more worth in concentrating efforts in
>>> getting OSGeo applications out there rather than spinning up new
>>> Ubuntu distributions every six months. To that end, a simple,
>>> user-driven binary installation process would seem to be optimal. We
>>> have OSGeo4W, why not OSGeo4L and OSGeo4M?
>> Because GNU/Linux is all about freedom of choice. No matter how we 
>> decide to create packages, people will want native packages for their 
>> distribution through UbuntuGIS, DebianGIS, EL, OBS, AUR etc.
>>
>> I agree that OSGeo4W is a huge project that fits exactly the needs of 
>> Windows users. I am sure a OSGeo4Mac would also be very successive.
>>>
>>> I don't see a technical barrier to this, so it's just limited by
>>> resources (our time!). Anyone got a spare 20 years?
>> If we had the spare time and I was to make this decision, I would 
>> prefer offering deb and rpm files for all OSGeo related projects and 
>> I would be left with 10 years for vacations :)
>>>
>>> Barry
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> Live-demo mailing list
>>> Live-demo at lists.osgeo.org
>>> http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/live-demo
>>> http://live.osgeo.org
>>> http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/Live_GIS_Disc
>>>
>> Cheers,
>> Angelos
>>
>
>

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