[Lazarus] following wiki for new clean install from SVN...

[Juha Manninen]

Bo Berglund kirjoitti torstai 10 helmikuu 2011 00:55:53:
> >- Easy things should be documented as being easy. For example installing
> >Lazarus trunk from SVN using an existing FPC is EASY. For Linux :
> >
> >$ cd ~
> >$ svn co http://svn.freepascal.org/svn/lazarus/trunk lazarus
> >$ cd lazarus
> >$ make all
> >$ ./lazarus &
> 
> "make all" executed on the command line presupposes that the *correct*
> version of make is on path, which is not always the case...
> I encountered this and had a hard time understanding what was going
> on. Turned out I had a make.exe before the fpc one because I had
> installed BDS 2006 on my PC. And this make is totally unsuited for FPC
> work...

Yes, I have seen this problem. It must be mentioned in the installation page 
for Windows. On Linux such problem does not occur.


> >For Windows it is about as easy.
> >However that is not obvious from the current wiki page.
> 
> On Windows (where I am) I found that the best way to compile lazarus
> was to make a simple batch file where the path is modified to point to
> the correct FPC binary. This way it does not matter how other installs
> have messed up the path variable. 

Installing many versions of FPC is an advanced task.
My idea was to simplify instructions for the basic install. Advanced  stuff can 
be documented as being advanced.
Currently the wiki page gives an impression that even the basic installation 
is a very complex task.


> On my Windows boxes path is horrible
> after installing a few scores of programs and utilities. They all seem
> to want to add themselves to path even though it typically is not
> needed. And they put themselves at the beginning or end with no
> systematic reason too. And finally, when uninstalling some utilities
> they do not bother removing themselves from path either. :-(
> 
> My batch file looks like this:
> 
> @echo off
> echo This will build lazarus 0_9_30_fixes branch with FPC 2.4.2
> echo If this is not OK then use ctrl-c to exit.
> pause
> set PATH=C:\Programs\lazarus\fpc\2.4.2\bin\i386-win32
> make.exe clean all
> pause

The page already has many scripts that confuse the newbies more that help 
them. Please don't add more scripts to confuse them more.


> >- Concentrate on the essential. For example installing and using
> >TortoiseSVN should NOT be documented at the same page with Lazarus
> >installation (naturally).
> 
> I believe that someone who has not used SVN but need it in order to
> get the sources should really be adviced to install the command line
> SVN, because TSVN is really very confusing and invades the Windows
> Explorer no end.

Both of those tools can be MENTIONED but their installation and usage must NOT 
be documented on a page explaining Lazarus installation.
If someone doesn't know how to get files from a Subversion server, he can 
easily find such information from net, by searchng "Installing Subversion" and 
"Using Subversion" etc.
When a person reads a document of Lazarus installation, he expects to get 
Lazarus installation and not SVN installation.
The same way a reader of SVN installation document does not expect to get 
Lazarus installation.

I separated some of those "deviations" to their own sub-pages but the result 
is still half-baked as I noted.

Juha