Thank you Mr. Prime Guinea Pig.
A guinea pig-like experiment did occur when
@airdronian ,
@je2a3, and I actually
compiled Moode from its various source files in spring 2018. Uncharted waters.
Evidently the free open source Linux police were investigating various entities for failure to abide by the licenses, so building it from scratch was the only way to get Moode 4 at that time, there was no easy downloadable disk image available from the developer, you had to create your own.
With a fast internet connection, it still took over 1 hour to download and compile, and if something went wrong, you were back to square one.
The developer did provide a build script, otherwise it likely would have been impossible for all but an experienced Linux developer. The build script did more or less automate the process, however it wasn't what I'd consider 100% entirely straightforward, and most people would have said "yeah, sure... shoot me in the head while we're at it" or "you guys must be
nuts", or something to that effect.
In the end I think all 3 of us learned something, and though each of us experienced problems, we stayed at it until working instances of Moode 4 were in place.
I had only ever done something like that once prior, at the time I bought AssetUPnP for Linux you had to compile it yourself, and also add some customization with additional lines of code for things like automatic reboot after a power outage.
Then in fall 2018 with the original SACDExtractGUI, you had to compile the v3.9 executable yourself. So the experience gained in compiling Moode 4 from source files actually came in handy down the road.
In each of those cases the developer also provided a build script, the AssetUPnP build I somehow managed on the very first attempt. Not so with the somewhat longer more involved script to build sacd_extract v3.9, though in the end that was simply a case of syntax errors on my part, once the script was properly entered in Terminal, it went off without a hitch.
While building programs from source files isn't exactly what I'd call fun, it was in the end enlightening, and I am better for having done it. I learned something, and I'd bet
@airdronian and
@je2a3 did too.
Fast forward to today, and the download and flash of a ready to use Moode, or Ropieee disk image is a comparative walk in the park. This will go smoothly, just ask
@mred ,
@ejfud ,
@marantzfan ,or
@RoadDawgWest among others who recently took the plunge. Each probably ran into one or two small snags that were easily enough resolved, and now they are just playing music, with (hopefully) no fiddling.
