Re: Awesome new Mozilla roadmap!

[Sean Middleditch <elanthis awesomeplay com>]

On Sun, 2003-04-06 at 19:39, Ali Akcaagac wrote:
> On Monday 07 April 2003 01:21, Sean Middleditch wrote:
> > This is the most foolish thing I've from you yet.  Aside from the fact
> > that pkg-config is *not* GNOME specific (I use it in all my projects,
> > none of which are GNOME software, or even depend on glib), it's frickin
> > useful piece of technology that *all* software should use.  It solves a
> > problem at the OS level, does so very well, and exists for the sake of
> > making software building and installation far easier.  XFree86 becomes
> > more usable (software building wise) for *all* software, be it GNOME,
> > KDE, something Motif based, whatever, while those who wish to not use
> > are in no way forced to - they can continue using black-magic flags to
> > ./configure and setting environment variables to do their basic software
> > building.
> 
> You asked for it and you got an answer, so where is the point ? Personally I 
> think that pkgconfig adds another level of complexity to the to be build 
> software. The old *-config files did the trick very well but NO, something 
> new has to be created just for the sake going for new ways. All these evil 
> things has been invented by people working on GNOME. Instead getting the 
> desktop up to some usable state you people trying hard to convince other 
> projects to adapt your stuff.

the *-config scripts were horrible, because they wre non-standard (you
never knew what options they took) and you still had to *find* them.  It
also didn't solve the problem that every application had to do the
detection, version testing, and error-handling code on its own.  With
pkg-config, you just call it, and it does the magic for you.

I don't know if pkg-config was created by a GNOMEr or not - I use it
extensively, as I said, in non-GNOME libraries, and am very thankful it
is there.  The -config scripts were a pain in the arse to work with,
resulted in massive duplications of code/logic, etc.

Whether it's created by GNOME hackers or not, it's one of the coolest
utilities I've seen, and I'd rather it exist than not.  Hopefully more
libs use it so developers can spend more time working on quality, useful
software than spending hours making -config scripts and accompanying
autoconf macros.  :P


> 
> Anyways I again wonder where we stepped again with this conversation. I always 
> wonder why this is happening on the GNOME lists and on no other list. 
> Seriously the GNOME people are the most hard to deal with people. We simply 
> have to different opinions and we should still respect each other without 
> getting on a low level of conversation.

What do you expect?  You've said my desktop of choice is crap, it's
developers are evil, it's going nowhere, that KDE is lightyears ahead of
it, etc.  You've insulted my tastes, many of my developer heroes, and
indirectly indicated that I must be some kind of idiot for using
inferior software.  Why the hell *should* I, or anyone else, respond
with anything resembling an open mind?

Just try, *try* sending a message to this list with
 a) concise summaries of your "issues"
 b) absoluetly no poitnless derogatory comments
 c) useful suggestions on how to fix problems (i.e., an actual procedure
or idea with details, no "give up and start over you all suck")
 d) actual proof of any wild-ass numbers you have about user preference,
usability, etc. - this does not mean some random bozo on a forum
spouting out nonsense because he hasn't had his medicine in a while.

If you have specific issues, log them to bugzilla.  If you don't like
doing that, then the problem must not be worth it to you.  Mailing lists
suck, on GNOME or any other software, for issue tracking.  Mailboxes get
cleaned out, mail list archives don't provide status tracking or
meta-data, etc. - bugs need bug tracking software.  I rather dislike
bugzilla myself but that's what GNOME uses, that's what you have to use
to log bugs.  GNOME has a rather nice/easy front-end if you haven't
tried it yet, makes submitting bugs far less painful.

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-- 
Sean Middleditch <elanthis awesomeplay com>
AwesomePlay Productions, Inc.