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[return to "Open Source Doesn't Require Providing Builds"]
1. torste+a4[view] [source] 2024-01-22 20:03:51
>>mroche+(OP)
Ehhhh... the makefile or AC/AM, which is to say the build process, has long been considered part of the source code.

It's not strictly required by the definition of open source, but....

A) If you don't provide builds and successful building is more involved then ./configure && make && make install, then you're pretty user-unfriendly.

B) If you aren't providing builds for target platforms then you probably aren't building for target platforms, which means part of your software has zero test coverage. Again, not a requirement, but it's fair for people to count that as a negative.

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2. eesmit+3a[view] [source] 2024-01-22 20:32:07
>>torste+a4
Even Makefile / autoconfig / automake can be user-unfriendly in the face of dependencies.

I used to distribute open source bindings to a commercial+proprietary library. I couldn't provide builds because I didn't have a distribution right to the proprietary license, even though I could test it on my own copy.

These days I'm having a tough time providing a build for macOS because my Python extension uses OpenMP, and there are several different ways to get OpenMP for that OS. See https://pypackaging-native.github.io/key-issues/native-depen... for details, including how PyTorch vendors Intel's libiomp while Scikit-learn vendors clang's libomp or GNU's libgomp.

Rather than deal with that mess, I provide source, and test with libgomp.

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