[Bf-committers] Static linux version, drop?

[Ken Hughes]

Campbell Barton wrote:
> Ken, can you make some decision before people start complaining about
> problems with OSX packages? :D
>   
Let me summarize my feelings:

* A single tar.bz2 which contains the mesa GL shared libraries sounds 
like the best way to go (to solve the original problem).  When someone 
runs into a problem with HW acceleration possibly related to their 
drivers, they already have everything they need to test using the SW 
version.

* With so any linux distros out there, I don't see a practical solution 
for supporting their individual package managers.  We would need (at the 
least) .deb and .rpm packages in addition to the tar.bz2 files.   But 
should we do this, we'll be "competing" with the packages users can 
download directly for their distro and so to install blender from our 
site they would need to uninstall blender that comes with their distro, 
and if they later encounter a bug it's going to be confusing trying to 
track its cause.  We would end up telling users to download and install 
our tar.bz2 file to find the problem.

* autopackage I fear doesn't solve the problem either; I haven't played 
with it much (although I did build a blender package with it using Cam's 
instructions), but it seems that it's just going to run into some of the 
same issues.

* The bottom line for noob users; if they want to use blender but must 
rely on their package management system, then it's better they don't 
download the official release.  If they do find a bug, try to isolate it 
with the simplest .blend file they can and upload to the tracker for us 
to take over.

Ken