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Source code is the lowest common denominator. If you're providing binaries, you might try to cover the latest couple of versions of a distro, plus maybe a stab
by chriswarbo 10y ago
Source code is the lowest common denominator.
If you're providing binaries, you might try to cover the latest couple of versions of a distro, plus maybe a stable/long-term-support version for more conservative sysadmins; that's 3 versions.
Let's say you do this for x86-64, x86 and ARM; plus a slightly different ARM version to handle raspberrypi quirks.
You might do this for popular Linux distros, like Ubuntu, Debian, Fedora and Arch. Then there's FreeBSD, and you might want one of the other more-popular unices (e.g. OpenBSD, (Open)Solaris/Indiana/whatever.)
Assuming you've done all of that, you'll still get complaints from someone running AIX on a PowerPC.
On the other hand, if you provide the source, along with some common build system (e.g. autoconf for C, setuptools for Python, etc.) then it should work out of the box on most of those systems; plus, if there are any issues with a particular setup, you've given the user the resources they need to debug and patch it themselves, if they're that sort of person.