Installing a compiler by default

[John McCabe-Dansted]

> If you go this way then I suggest that the command "make" should be
> aliased by default to ' echo  "Please install the build-essential package
> to enable compiling on your system. It is on the CD"'
>
> But why go to the trouble of doing that or something like it, when you
> could easily *just install the tools by default*.... !

It seems that the ideal solution would be if ./configure had an option
to automatically fetch dependencies. After all, just because you have
*a* version of gcc doesn't necessarily mean you have the right one, or
that all the right libraries have been installed.

Also if bash had a hook so that whenever you type a missing command,
you were given instructions on how to install it e.g.

"bash-3.00$ acroread
bash: acroread: command not found
To install type: apt-get enable multiverse && apt-get install acroread"

This would be cool. Perhaps software could perhaps even automatically
fetched, similar to zeroinstall. It would seem a lot more convenient
if software (at least software in approved repositories) was at the
users fingertips rather than them needing to either compile it
themselves or wait for an admin to install it for them.

-- 
John C. McCabe-Dansted
PhD Student
University of Western Australia