One of the bullet points from the Meson website:
> * fun!
So if I understand correctly, this modern build tool created to replace all the extant time-wasting build tools got memorialized in Debian in a half-baked state where it's not compatible with future versions.
Also-- the fact that you had to leave the hardened bank vault of apt through the screen door of pip... to install a thing to build other things to run on your system.
I love it.
> If so, why is it I so seldom can can get anything written for GJS, or Node, or a Python program not my own, to install and run without a three-hour yak shave?
... is the question that explains why Electron exists. Every comment on HN about its size, memory usage, and insecurity doubles as a critique of all the problems you just hit with a Linux system.
Electron: "Memory and disk space is cheap enough, but your time will never be."
There's an open issue here on supporting older systems: https://github.com/johnfactotum/foliate/issues/45
I've using Linux as my primary desktop at work and home for going on 25 years.
If you want to use newer software you should pick a distribution that is geared for that.
Debian stable is for people that DON'T want new software or even to try new software.
You are at odds with your choices.
Either switch to Testing, Unstable or pick an Ubuntu strategy ie Long term or every 6 months.
Of these choices Ubuntu is actually more conservative then Testing or Unstable as it walks forward in a predictable time based manner.
Good luck.
(I don't have enough experience with GJS and WebkitGtk to know if slightly older versions would have been workable here, though I believe that approach to be valid in most cases.)
You are making software reactionary arguments for people doing a lot of work to support you touristing their software from an ancient, long out of date software distribution (which is what people that use Debian Stable want).
If you are going to make bug reports or even comments you really would be better to state you are on Debian Stable from the beginning, it's actually rude to make people think you are on a reasonably supportable distro without warning.
Flatpak is probably your best choice to encourage people to be even able to support your distribution choice going forward. The sandbox also has some attendant benefits that will bear more fruit in the future.
I believe this is precisely what Foliate does. It depends on meson 0.40 (released Apr 2017) and gjs 0.52 (released Mar 2018). Sixteen months old dependencies can hardly be considered bleeding-edge.
Yeah, that's not how Debian stable works.
Nothing was! Debian stable doesn't update packages (not even minor releases or bugfixes). They only backport security fixes or very critical bugfixes.
Debian 9 was freezed on 2017-02-05. You'll have the version of every package from this date, point release don't change that.
My only reason for giving the point release date was to say that it's a supported release. You're reading a lot more into my tiny comment than I ever put into it.
Calling it "supported" in the context of the ability to build arbitrary software is misleading. It's supported by Debian for the particular packages included in Debian's package repositories - nothing less, nothing more.
https://flathub.org/apps/details/com.github.johnfactotum.Fol...
No, it didn't. Of course, Flatpak let me know that my user account didn't have the ability to configure the remote repositories the Foliate flatpakref specified. I could have searched for the right way to do it, but installing as root seemed to work, and it runs fine as a regular user, too!
But, of course, it doesn't. It doesn't have the ability to open files from most folders. I see by searching that you set sandbox permissions in an application manifest file, but I'm not sure I'm that attached to doing any more of this.
edit: I can also open files from anywhere on my PC. Could it be that the flatpak on Debian Stretch is not correctly configured?
I did finally install Debian testing, and it looks like the flatpak problems are resolved, but I decided not to bother installing foliate because of the nearly 700MB of dependencies it wanted over my rural satellite connection. C'est la vie.
Why complicate things? build-steps are the root of all evil.
If it's obvious to anyone else what's wrong here, it's not obvious to me. Isn't one of the advantages of interpreting the code on the target platform supposed to be portability? If so, why is it I so seldom can can get anything written for GJS, or Node, or a Python program not my own, to install and run without a three-hour yak shave?
I'm sure this is a great project, and I mean no disrespect to the author, who did a better job of installation instructions than most — but I'm tired of installation being such a pain. It's almost, but not quite, enough to make a guy run Windows.