GRC Install - Pybombs vs Binaries

Hello experts,
I have been using linux and GRC for about a year and as such I am still
pretty ‘green’ about a lot of stuff, but I am learning and hopefuly
someone
will be able to advise me about me questions.
I use GRC at work behind a firewall. Installing via Pybombs is very
cumbersome if not impossible only due to the fact that Pybombs ‘fetches’
various dependencies, etc from various locations on the internet. The
firewall is preventing access (as it is designed to) to some parts of
github, etc. So the only way to use pybombs in my circumstance is to
bring
the computer off site for the installation to complete without errors.
I
have recently learned how pybombs can be used to install or revert to a
specific version of GRC. The binary package which is installed with the
'apt-get install … " terminal command is allowable from behind the
firewall and seems to be a good solution for me going forward. At a
training course from Corgan Labs in the spring we were warned that
binaries
will be phased out in favour of pybombs.
This leads me to a few questions:

  1. Will the binaries be available and supported into the future or will
    pybombs eventualy be the method of choice?
  2. Is there an advantage to using one method over the other?
  3. Is there a way to identify a package version that is considered to
    be long term support compared to a minor bug fix (similar to the way
    that Ubuntu has identified its versions)?
    Best Regards,
    John M.

On 12/19/2014 02:56 PM, John M. wrote:

[…]
forward. At a training course from Corgan Labs in the spring we were
warned that binaries will be phased out in favour of pybombs.
This leads me to a few questions:

  1. Will the binaries be available and supported into the future or will
    pybombs eventualy be the method of choice?

Not sure what exactly you discussed with Johnathan, but in general we
recommend people to use the binaries (apt-get install), unless you need
a newer version or want to particpate in development. In particular, for
beginners this is a good choice because it removes at least one awkward
stage of getting started.
Note that you should have at least a 3.7.x version. Latest Ubuntus ship
this. If this is not the case, that would be one case where we don’t
recommend using binaries.

  1. Is there an advantage to using one method over the other?

The obvious ones: apt-get is easier, pybombs gives you more flexibility
and newest stuff. The latter also has the advantage that you have
immediate access to lots of OOT modules.

  1. Is there a way to identify a package version that is considered to
    be long term support compared to a minor bug fix (similar to the way
    that Ubuntu has identified its versions)?

We don’t really have this. You can see some releases have four-figure
version numbers (e.g. 3.7.5.1) which is what happens when we add some
bugfixes to a release (in this case, 3.7.5). There’s still too much
change going on with GNU Radio to freeze an LTS version of it.

Cheers,
M

On 20/12/14 00:03, Martin B. wrote:

a newer version or want to particpate in development. In particular, for
immediate access to lots of OOT modules.
Cheers,
M


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If it is of any interest, Mageia 5 will be launched in late January with
gnuradio-3.7.5.1 available for install using the Mageia package manager.
Mageia 5 will have a two year life cycle with bug-fix only updates
during that time.
Cheers,
Barry