Re: cairo, freetype, fontconfig, et al.

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

Peter,

Point taken...

In order to avoid building a needed dependency for a GARNOME
application, several things must be true about an external/distro
package that satisfies the dependency:

* The set of versions acceptable to *all* of the GARNOME packages that
use this dependency is known.

* The relevant content [executables, header files, and libraries] is
available and easily located.

* A simple mechanism exists to determine the version of the package

* libtool files associated with the external package create no conflicts
with other GARNOME packages.

There has been a lot of academic work on the detection, construction,
and maintenance of software dependencies. As is true of all problems of
this genre, the easy things are easy the hard things are hard.

What I believe can be done in the near term is pick away at some of the
simple cases like pkg-config and revisit this issue on a recurring
basis.


-Joseph

===========================================================================
On Tue, 2006-10-17 at 11:13 -0400, Peter wrote:
> On Tue, 17 Oct 2006 11:01:02 -0400, Joseph E. Sacco, Ph.D. wrote:
> 
> snip...
> > 
> > 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
> 
> I understand. I suppose I am looking at this as a packager would, not a
> user looking to install it into $HOME/garnome.
> 
> It works fine as is, and I completely understand your hesitance to wreck a
> good thing. I _do_ think, however, that it's worth keeping in mind
> tinkering with the core dependencies and using what's common in most
> distros today. And, I also think it's worth keeping in mind what to do if
> dbus, hal, or avahi are already installed.
> 
> Thanks
> 
> -- 
> Peter
> 
-- 
joseph_sacco [at] comcast [dot] net