FreeTDS Development Group

[James Cameron <cameron AT stl.dec.com>]

Norman Palardy wrote:
> I did read all of those; passed over the CVS ones because I figured I
> should be able to get just the version I downloaded to work.

Yes, you should be able to get that version to work, and many others
have, but it is old and the CVS version is newer, so we generally ask
you to try that in case the problem is already fixed.

> Neither the README nor the INSTALL point you to the User guide
> Personally I think this is an oversight

It has been fixed in CVS.  It will be included in the next release.  I
think much of the Users Guide was done after the 0.52 release, but I
cannot be sure.

> Where the heck the user guide was as neither the README nor INSTALL tell
> you where it is, and only a fairly thorough read through the FAQS will
> tell you where it is.

No, it is also a news item on the main page of http://freetds.org/ ...
the second item.  Easy to miss; maybe we need a 'Documentation' icon
down the left hand side of the page.  Maybe we also need a link to it
from the 'Download' page as you said.  (I'm not sure who has
responsibility for the web site yet, I'm still learning.)

> MAC OS X

I'm afraid I cannot help with that platform.  Perhaps it is represented
on the SourceForge compile farm.  If so, maybe I could do a build and
document it.

> Servers are on a variety of DEC Alpha's, [...]

Although I can help with them.  ;-)

> Personally, I think the best way to package this is to look at it from
> the end consumers point of view.

FreeTDS is a software integration product for use by software
engineers.  It is packaged in binary for Red Hat Linux and Debian
GNU/Linux systems, among others, and so can be transparently loaded onto
the end consumers system in order to satisfy library dependencies.  So
far, I'm happy with the packaging, though I can see it can be improved.

I suspect your main issue is the rare platform (for which we have not
made binary packages), and the other issue is the learning curve.  ;-)

-- 
James Cameron                                      (cameron AT stl.dec.com)

Not the Director of Titanic, but he had his name before I did.