Still struggling with Mono on SuSe 9.1.

Mostly I’m reminded that developing software is complicated. Developing software on Linux is extremely complicated. The mental anguish I’ve went through the last few days is more than most Windows programmers would be willing to suffer. It also makes me appreciate with much more significance the elegance and simplicity that Paco brings to the Mono Windows Installer. Of course building is one thing and installing from source is quite another. However, Red Carpet is supposed to be the pain free method for installing on Linux. Yes, it was painless and Mono worked fine after words. Unfortunately, the installation for MonoDevelop, MonoDoc, XSP, and mod_mono apparently was not quite as successful. From there I ventured off the beaten path and tried to build everything myself.

Now I’m using YaST Online Update to update SuSE 9.1. I’ve got a vague hope that the update will resolve something that is missing and I’ll avoid my next recourse. The next step if I can’t get things settled is to build the entire Gtk+2 and Glib2 libraries and then rebuild Mono. Think of the great learning experience I’m having! I never knew just how messy this could get. O.k., I get it. It’s pretty disgusting and I’m very appreciative that there are people like Paco who are working to make things less messy. Now could I finish up and move on to the next preparation step?

A golden lining

Once again eternal optimism proves its point. Today I received an approval e-mail message for a proposal I made with Paco for this years O’Reilly Open Source Conference. After unsuccessful attempts for last years conference and the upcoming MySQL conference, I upped the ante and submitted four proposals for this conference. I’m really thankful for the opportunity and owe a lot to Paco for his support. I’m still hoping that some of the other sessions are still alive. Even if they are not, this will be the first time I get the honor to present at a major conference, so I feel truly blessed.