Re: [Texmacs-dev] Disastrous boot time for new versions

[Nix N. Nix]

Not to be a party-pooper or anything, however, I would like to remind
you that Guile is widely available in most popular distributions due to
the fact that, IIRC, it is used by GNOME (sawfish , et. al.).  Also,
TeXmacs is available in a convenient RPM form, which plugs right in with
most major distributions.

Many people who use TeXmacs are not necessarily Unix hackers.  They just
want to double-click on the RPM and get to work on their papers, rather
than having to hack around (where even ./configure ; make ; make
install; can be considered "hacking around" - although to a much smaller
extent).

If TeXmacs ends up depending on a Scheme implementation other than
Guile, it will lose the automatic Guile support of major distributors. 
Consequently, I recommend that a link be placed on the texmacs.org Web
site right next to the link pointing to the TeXmacs rpm, a link to a RPM
package containing whatever Scheme implementation TeXmacs will end up
using, so that all those non-hackers with very little time on their
hands can simply double-click not 1, but 2 RPMs and continue to be on
their way through newer versions of TeXmacs.

Realize that this means that the Scheme implementation in question /must
have/ an RPM version of itself - even .src.rpm would be OK.  Otherwise,
I would have to say that it would be necessary for /somebody/ at
texmacs.org to maintain an RPM version of the Scheme implementation
TeXmacs will end up depending on.  Of course, this could be done in
co-operation with the maintainers of the Scheme implementation, which
would benefit both communities, but that's an issue to be addressed
later.

Consequently, I believe that

cd ~/some-scheme-distro ; ./configure ; make ; make install
cd ../TeXmacs-current-src ; ./configure ; make ; make install

should be the absolute worst-case-scenario any user should have to go
through.

TeXmacs has always (in my experience, since 0.3.2.5 or so) been
convenient to install.  This must not change, if the user base is to
remain and grow.