needed-software suggestion

[Scott Christley]

It's been awhile since I've installed Swarm, so I've forgotten exactly what  
"needed-software" entails; unfortunately the web pages don't help, they just  
point to the ftp site.

If I may make a suggestion, put only a single copy of each package in the  
needed-software directory, so that it is clear that everything in that ftp  
directory must be downloaded.  Older versions and/or newer beta versions of  
packages should be separated into other directories, right now when I look in  
the directory this is what I see:

-rw-rw-r--   1 717      133      1067742 Apr 21  1996 BLT2.1.tar.gz
-rw-rw-r--   1 717      133       770084 Sep 17  1997 BLT2.3.tar.gz
-rw-rw-r--   1 717      133          188 May 12  1996 README
-rw-r--r--   1 845      133      1267456 Mar 20 21:58 
blt8.0-unoff-swarm-0.tar.gz
-rw-rw-r--   1 717      133      7089723 Nov 29  1995 gcc-2.7.2.tar.gz
-rw-rw-r--   1 845      133      8477747 Jan 16 17:10 gcc-2.8.0.tar.gz
-rw-rw-r--   1 717      133      5996836 Apr 25  1996 gdb-4.16.tar.gz
-rw-rw-r--   1 717      133      1054291 May 27  1997  
gdb-objc-4.16.i586.linux.ELF.tar.gz
-rw-rw-r--   1 717      133      6259762 May 27  1997 gdb-objc-4.16.tar.gz
-rw-rw-r--   1 845      133       105161 Feb 25 20:36 libffi-1.17.tar.gz
-rw-rw-r--   1 717      133        54456 Sep 12  1997 libtclobjc-1.1b7.tar.gz
-rw-rw-r--   1 717      133       520964 May 20  1995 make-3.74.tar.gz
-rw-rw-r--   1 717      133       381908 Jul 11  1995 tcl7.4.tar.gz
-rw-rw-r--   1 717      133         5617 Aug  2  1995 tcl7.4p1.patch.gz
-rw-rw-r--   1 717      133         3741 Sep 19  1995 tcl7.4p2.patch.gz
-rw-rw-r--   1 717      133         3786 Nov 30  1995 tcl7.4p3.patch.gz
-rw-rw-r--   1 717      133       837404 Nov  1  1996 tcl7.5.tar.gz
-rw-rw-rw-   1 845      99        959397 Nov 28 00:10 tcl7.6p2.tar.gz
-rw-rw-r--   1 717      133        26710 Oct  2  1996 tclObjc.m
lrwxrwxrwx   1 845      99            19 Dec 16 21:43 tclobjc-1.2.tar.gz ->  
tclobjc-1.2b.tar.gz
-rw-rw-r--   1 845      133        57396 Dec 16 21:40 tclobjc-1.2b.tar.gz
-rw-r--r--   1 845      133        58789 Mar 20 21:54 tclobjc-1.3.tar.gz
-rw-rw-r--   1 717      133      1245443 Jul 11  1995 tk4.0.tar.gz
-rw-rw-r--   1 717      133        15992 Aug  2  1995 tk4.0p1.patch.gz
-rw-rw-r--   1 717      133        11913 Sep 19  1995 tk4.0p2.patch.gz
-rw-rw-r--   1 717      133        19003 Nov 30  1995 tk4.0p3.patch.gz
-rw-rw-r--   1 717      133      1608814 Nov  1  1996 tk4.1.tar.gz
-rw-rw-rw-   1 845      99       1716927 Nov 28 00:11 tk4.2p2.tar.gz
-rw-rw-r--   1 717      133       128779 Feb  2  1996 xpm-3.4h.tar.gz

which tends to make certain questions pop up in my mind.  Like why are there  
two versions of BLT, which one is more appropriate, and what is this unoff  
thing anyways?  And so on and so forth...

If anything, the README should describe what each file in the directory is  
and how it relates to Swarm.

I suppose I should be smart enough to know that I should just pick the  
largest numbers for each package, but there is still the nagging question of  
why are there old versions sitting around anyways?

just a thought
Scott

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