Andreas Kreisig <and### [at] gmxde> writes:

> An RPM based distribution *is* a good idea. Most major Linux distributions 
> are LSB compliant now and POV-Rays binary structure is not very complicated 
> so it shouldn't be a problem to install it on most Linux boxes. Regarding 
> the libraries - the RPM system will resolve all dependencies, so I can't 
> see any issues here.

The problem is not just the binaries. The problem is also where to
place the include files, the reference documentation, the examples,
the .ini files etc. 

RPM can't help you if you don't have the right version of a library.
At most it will bark and stop. And I don't think you can mix RPMs from
different vendors without trouble.

> > For one thing, RPM isn't even used by all distributions.
> 
> Right, but you'll find it on nearly all distributions, even on Debian.

While it is true that you can install RPMs in Debian too if you
install alien, I doubt anyone is going to do that as long as there is
a maintained Debian package which does the Right Thing for Debian.


It is not that I think having povray.org binaries is per se a bad
idea, but I think it might be harder than it appears and difficult to
get right. And most distributions seem to package it themselves anyway
(at least Debian, SuSE, Red Hat).

-- 
Ole Laursen
http://www.cs.auc.dk/~olau/

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