Re: hosting binary packages

[Stefan Gerlach <gerlach@mbi-berlin.de>]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1402 bytes --]

Hello,

> Generally I am not a great believer in distributing binaries by ftp
> from a security viewpoint--it is better for distributors to do that,
> as a tested part of their distribution, or for people to compile from
> source (which is not too difficult in the case of GSL).

Yes. I though more of a laboratory environment where security is not so 
important. But packages can be signed with PGP. You just have to trust the 
packager.
Also some people may not have the time to compile GSL from source and 
installing and removing precompiled packages is much easier.

> If the distributions are minor ones, I wouldn't think it's worth it to
> be honest.  If there are some major distributions which are not
> including it or have stopped maybe I can ask them why or ask them to
> add it.  Last time I checked, it was included in RHEL/Fedora, SUSE,
> Mandriva and Debian.

You are right. Most distributions including gsl. But the versions are not 
updated. I see no major distribution which includes gsl 1.7. (SUSE 10.0, 
Fedora Core 4 and Mandriva 2006 use gsl-1.6).
Also if you have an older distribution (this is often required for special 
hardware or in a laboratory) only old gsl packages are avaiable (RedHat 9 : 
gsl-1.1.1).

I just though providing gsl-1.7 packages for all major distributions may be a 
good idea to help people using it.

-- 
Stefan Gerlach

[-- Attachment #2: Type: application/pgp-signature, Size: 189 bytes --]