This is me without all the swearing, lol. I am not a code person but I am into FOSS for ethical and privacy reasons and some github pages can be truly frustrating especially if it’s an app that’s description is exactly what you’re looking for yet it’s out of reach.
it’s just as much my fault for needing weird niche programs and not just learning, but christ i swear every time i’ve done it the steps have been completely different hahahah
Once big reason it’s building from source is to accommodate as many installation scenarios as possible. It’s different for each because everyone builds things differently but they all should be able to run from source on anything ideally. (This is a very boiled down explanation)
If the project is actively maintained, you can always ask for an installer to be provided. Often developers don’t put in the effort if they don’t think anyone would need it
I always try to build installer scripts at a minimum, usually with automatic dependency resolvers baked in to try and make it as easy as possible. The downside of doing things this way is that I spend about 15-30% more time on my releases vs writing pure features/bugfixes/security, and sometimes script installerrs can be brittle (they break between different systems or updates). I choose to do that because my apps are all intended to be end-user facing and ND-primary focus so it makes sense for me to put that effort in.
This is me without all the swearing, lol. I am not a code person but I am into FOSS for ethical and privacy reasons and some github pages can be truly frustrating especially if it’s an app that’s description is exactly what you’re looking for yet it’s out of reach.
“INSTALL: build from source” 😬
it’s just as much my fault for needing weird niche programs and not just learning, but christ i swear every time i’ve done it the steps have been completely different hahahah
Once big reason it’s building from source is to accommodate as many installation scenarios as possible. It’s different for each because everyone builds things differently but they all should be able to run from source on anything ideally. (This is a very boiled down explanation)
If the project is actively maintained, you can always ask for an installer to be provided. Often developers don’t put in the effort if they don’t think anyone would need it
I always try to build installer scripts at a minimum, usually with automatic dependency resolvers baked in to try and make it as easy as possible. The downside of doing things this way is that I spend about 15-30% more time on my releases vs writing pure features/bugfixes/security, and sometimes script installerrs can be brittle (they break between different systems or updates). I choose to do that because my apps are all intended to be end-user facing and ND-primary focus so it makes sense for me to put that effort in.
I just made my own shitty NSIS script generator for windows and an easily adaptable script for GNU/Linux systems.