Binary compatibility on Linux

[Jacob Carlborg]

On 2012-11-14 19:20, John Colvin wrote:

> Debian testing is a rolling distribution, so it is always in an unstable
> state. Debian stable is, as it says, stable. To answer your question,
> just look at what debain version the particular ubuntu LTS version is
> based on.

Good point, how can I do that?

> To be honest, unless you're going to package all your dependancies along
> with the download, then you have to go down one of two routes: source
> distribution with a nice simple build procedure or making packages for
> the main distributions. I would recommend doing both.

I do provide source distribution. Not much of distribution, it's always 
available on Github. But I have one tool, DVM, which is a tool for 
installing D compilers and it's also written in D. It's a bit of a 
chicken-and-egg-problem. Sure you can get D compiler in other ways. But 
I think this tool in particular is very convenient to have available as 
a pre-built executable.

A read a bit about creating packages for Debian, it seemed complicated 
and that I need to use stupid tools like Make. I hate Make.

> Look at it this way: the sort of people who aren't using a debian or
> fedora based distro aren't going to be phased by building from source
> (as a matter of fact they might prefer it).
> If you provide packages for debian and fedora and a source distribution
> as a fallback then you've covered the vast majority of your bases,
> allowing less advanced users to use package managers and letting the
> wild-west fringe distro people do whatever they want.


-- 
/Jacob Carlborg