REBOL Technologies

Yes, we do support Linux

Carl Sassenrath, CTO
REBOL Technologies
15-Mar-2006 16:08 GMT
Article #0260
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We've received a flood of messages asking for new REBOL builds for Linux, and I wanted to be sure to mention that we are working on it.

Yes, we've had what I consider to be problems building for Linux. (BTW, not everyone agrees that these are problems. For some people it works fine.) Perhaps it is really just a problem for me personally because: I like it when a single REBOL binary runs on as many Linux versions as possible. This used to be the easy -- before we added some of the newer features that require additional libraries of specific versions, some of which are not installed by default on various Linux installations.

What can we do? Here are the solutions we are looking at:

  1. Build for base Linux distributions (e.g. Debian) that are used for a variety of other Linux distros.

  2. Do not build with the most recent version, it's normally an unsupported beta with odd-ball library versions that are missing on many boxes. (Sometimes we're surprised to find out that an "official distribution" is not an official Linux release. Why do they do that?)

  3. Static link some key libraries. For example, we only use a small number of functions from the stdc++ lib, so we think it may be better not to dynamic link it.

  4. Redesign a few small parts of REBOL to not require certain libraries. For instance, REBOL/View uses XAW (Athena Widgets) for displaying the security requestor (and it's pretty ugly too). I think it could be done directly with REBOL faces (in a way that would still be secure), and would look a lot better as a result.

So, there you have it. We do support Linux. We use Linux all over the place. There have been some delays, and we are sorry about that. We don't mind supporting the primary distibutions, and we hope to get this situation fixed soon.

Are you a Linux expert? If so, we welcome your help and advice on this topic.

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