tightening requirements... sorta

[Robby Workman]

Brian J. Tarricone wrote:
> Hey guys,
> 
> I just noticed in #xfce yet another millionth person asked about why
> they have to press F5 to refresh their desktop every time they create
> or delete a file on the desktop.  Of course, the answer is always the
> same, and I'm getting tired of these repetitive questions.
> 
> Clearly, FAQing things like this doesn't work.  People just don't
> read.  Period.
> 
> So, I'd like to propose making gamin/FAM a "soft required" dependency
> for Thunar.  This really just amounts to a configure script change.  If
> you just run configure with no arguments, and gamin/FAM isn't present,
> then the configure script errors out, with a message telling you to
> install it, or if you *really* don't want it, to pass
> --disable-change-notification to configure, in which case it'll let you
> compile without gamin/FAM.
> 
> What do people think?  There may be other places we can do this (like
> maybe with xfdesktop's file icon support) to reduce time spent
> answering stupid questions.


Agreed in full; do it. :)


> P.S.  I wonder how many of the people who ask questions like this are
> using distro packages or are compiling themselves.  If they're using
> distro packages, this might not really help so much, as presumably the
> packager will want the same behavior regardless of what we "strongly
> recommend" in our configure script.


I suspect that it's mostly self-compiled installations, although I
have no experience to back it up :)

-RW