writing spk howto (?)

[Kenny Hitt]

Hi.  The ideal HOWTO in this case would hava a section for each distro.
I don't believe there is any easy way to just write instructions that
are independent of a specific distro.
For example, I only have to build speechd-up from CVS on my Debian box.
Unstable has a Debian package for speech-dispatcher 0.5. I believe the
version in testing is still at 0.4, but haven't checked.
I have to disagree with Chuck on this one.  When I look for a HOWTO, I
try to find a Debian specific one first and only use a "general" HOWTO
as a last resort.  I've found doing things my distro's way just makes my
life easier.

          Kenny
	  

On Wed, Nov 03, 2004 at 06:40:36AM -0500, Janina Sajka wrote:
> Well, I think it would not be hard to point at all kinds of
> documentation that misses one major point or another.
> 
> Fact is, dependencies are important and a system's functionality can
> easily become impaired by failing to manage dependencies appropriately.
> It seems to me the fact that so few of us build our Linux installations
> from scratch is ample testimony to this fact.
> 
> As far as I now, there are not any package files for speechd-up as of
> yet. If memroy serves, there is a .deb for speech-dispatcher. Do you
> really think it doesn't matter whether a someone uses the package or
> attempts to build from scratch? Isn't it even more important for a
> newbie to understand this?
> 
> Chuck Hallenbeck writes:
> > Sure. That would be great. But I have often read a howto that addresses
> > only a single distro, relying on distro specific stuff, with no notion
> > that people using other distros might be out there as well. We get
> > enough of that from Redmond.
> > 
> > 
> > On Tue, 2 Nov 2004, Janina Sajka wrote:
> > 
> > >I aggree with you in a general way, but wonder whether you'd also agree
> > >that one should, when possible, stick to standard procedures on one's
> > >distro. In other words, when on Debian, install a .deb if you can, and
> > >when on Fedora, use an rpm if you can, etc., etc.
> > >
> > >Chuck Hallenbeck writes:
> > >>David,
> > >>
> > >>I presently have software speech running on my Slackware 10.0 distro,
> > >>using version 0.5rc3 of speech-dispatcher, and would be happy to share
> > >>my setup with you or help in any other way with the howto. It would be a
> > >>valuable contribution to make such a document available, particularly if
> > >>it were not specific to any one distro.
> > >>