[mapserver-users] simplicity

[Stephen Lime]

Greetings: I'm all in favor of making the software easier to install and use, and would back the formation of groups to coordinate the distribution of binary releases for various platforms. I think the UMN would need to play a role in making that happen, much like their role in getting documentation put together. The development team plays a role in making the software actually buildable under a variety of circumstances. We probably need a document that lays out exactly what you need to build the code, or at least explains what each supporting library brings to the table.

On a couple of other comments:

- Including everything in the distribution: nope, ain't gonna happen. Simply too hard to keep up-to-date, not to mention legal issues associated with some of the commercial packages that can be tied into.

- Some compilation issues can't be mitigated ahead of time. I mean if you have GD installed on your system and it doesn't support GIF or whatever then the solution is to re-build GD. What can be done is to provide a forum for advice on how to work around these issues. The mailing list is one way, formal forums would be another. There are plans for a series of MapServer Wikis that could address the various topics identified by Puneet in the first message in this thread. The biggest pain in building MapServer with static libs is dealing with all the friggin libraries installed on the box. This is esspecially true on Linux machines.

- MapServer isn't really all that different from other OpenSource applications. Try building Gimp from scratch. What is different is the audience- which is broader and in some cases less technical. Fact is that maps are a cool thing to add to a website. If your machine has the right base libraries installed then making the software is trivial, getting to that point is the hard part.

The biggest impediments in widespread use of MapServer are not related to the internals of the software (what it can and can't do), they are productivity issues: easy installation, quality documentation and easy application configuration. I've known this for quite a while, but seeing as I can only work on this evenings after my kids go to bed there's no way I can spearhead the effort. So, everyone agree's there is a problem but is anyone willing to commit some time to making it happen?

Steve





Stephen Lime
Data & Applications Manager

Minnesota DNR
500 Lafayette Road
St. Paul, MN 55155
651-297-2937