[mapguide-internals] Beta version

[Gabriele Monfardini]

Dear all,

I would suggest to provide a binary version for GNU/Linux for stable
releases and beta versions.

Which GNU/Linux distribution to support is your choice, the only
requirement is that it should be modern, publicly available for
download and for free.

Actually in order to compile MapGuide 2.x on GNU/Linux is not
sufficient to be a GNU/Linux expert, it is required also to be a
MapGuide codebase expert.
The intersection of these two sets is actually quite small, I suppose.

This because all the software is tightly bundled with all its
dependences, so it is impossible to use the libraries already
available on a modern GNU/Linux distribution.
For example when I added ECW support at my GDAL all my GDAL-enabled
software (eg. QGIS) seamlessly start to work with ECW. The same when a
faster version of something is released. Not not mention when a
security problem is patched.
This is not true for MapGuide, and it's a pity since it uses a lot of
FOSS libraries that are steadily improved over time.

But this would be tolerable if at least recompiling the code was
feasible. That is not.

Since there have been no progresses on easing compilation on GNU/Linux
nor to enable MapGuide to use system-wide libraries (that would be
marvelous but I suppose also a lot of work), at least we need some
binaries.
We cannot afford to spend two weeks just to discover that some bugs
were not yet corrected in the new version (but maybe something old
does not work anymore...).

Regards,

Gabriele Monfardini