Re: cairo, freetype, fontconfig, et al.

["Joseph E. Sacco, Ph.D." <joseph_sacco comcast net>]

Peter,

The original purpose of the bootstrap directory was to provide support
for older distros that were lacking required tools or appropriate
versions of required tools. Given the number of distros/versions that
GARNOME runs on and a moving clock, this a fool's errand.  The GARNOME
developers have had a number of conversations, pro and con, about
removing the bootstrap directory. For now, we have left it alone.

As for using conditional tests...  The short answer is "For a given app
and/or a given distro, yes you can". For an example, look through the
GAR makefiles and you will find some scripting foo that does this for
firefox.  If you think about this for a while, some apps are easy to
detect/version-check others are not. It depends both upon the app and
the distro. Not all distros install all apps in the same place. Not all
apps provide a simple mechanism to detect version.

What this really comes down to is a counting argument.  GARNOME
currently consists of 260+ packages.  If the number of "unnecessary"
packages being built is small, so be it.  It that number approaches 10%
then there is an issue that needs to be addressed.

As you have discovered earlier, you can always modify LIBDEPS to
eliminate any dependency you find to be superfluous. How well that will
work will depend up which distro and which version you are running.  

-Joseph

==========================================================================



On Tue, 2006-10-17 at 10:36 -0400, Peter wrote:
> On Tue, 17 Oct 2006 08:59:55 -0400, Joseph E. Sacco, Ph.D. wrote:
> 
> > Peter,
> > 
> > Keeping a suite of packages current and consistent is a moving target. The
> > latest updates for GARNOME are always found in CVS.
> > 
> > Let's see...
> > 
> > * pkg-config
> > currently at 0.20. Version 0.21 is available.
> > 
> > OK... I can update that one.
> > 
> > 
> > * cairo
> > currently at version 1.24 in both CVS-HEAD and CVS-216
> > 
> > * freetype
> > currently at 2.1.10. Version 2.2.1 is available I looked at updating
> > freetype a while back.  I will look at it once again.
> > 
> > 
> > -Joseph
> > 
> I suppose what I am getting at is this: there ARE some dependencies listed
> for Garnome that are not compiled in the tree. These are expected to be on
> the host system.
> 
> Programs such as pkgconfig are most always available on the host system,
> and I don't understand why it's compiled fresh. Cairo, freetype,
> fontconfig too.
> 
> Why can't some kind of conditional test be done to avoid compiling
> duplicate versions of software.
> 
> I realize the complexity of this undertaking, but believe that the fewer
> moving parts, the simpler.
> 
> For example, if a user already had installed dbus, why recompile it? Just
> check the version, emit a note maybe, and go on to the next.
> 
> Just a thought.
> 
> What would happen if I mask a dependency. For example, if I moved the
> pkgconfig program to .pkgconfig. Would garnome choke?
> 
> -- 
> Peter
> 
-- 
joseph_sacco [at] comcast [dot] net