On Sun, 2007-12-30 at 09:31 -0500, Steve VanSlyck wrote:
Why don't the publishers of TeX just compile first? Why do *I* always have to do the compiling of these programs?!
Speaking as a maintainer of upstream FLOSS software, I believe I can answer this.
I've had thousands of users over the years ask me to build pre-compiled binary packages for my releases, and I can say that it's nearly impossible to do so.
There's no way for me to have all of the possible platforms (32-bit, 64-bit, x86, ppc, etc.) as well as all of the various library versions (with ssl, without ssl, older versions, bleeding-edge versions, etc.) and all of the necessary other pieces to replicate a version which works on every single platform for every single user. Statically-compiled binaries aren't a solution either in most cases.
If someone wants to donate hardware that matches every single platform that those users might be using, and contribute to the power bills I'll be paying to use those platforms, I'll gladly consider it, but it's just not a viable option for time/cost/availability reasons.