Re: almost ported.....

[Owen Taylor <owt1 cornell edu>]

> ->  > fair enuf.. then i'll have to merge my code wiht gdk and hackthe
> ->  > configure stuff to make it go in...
> ->  
> ->  Hold on a second. I'm willing to forget that I said anything about
> ->  this not going into GDK before GTK 1.0, but I am _not_ going to
> ->  stand it being put in with "hacked" configure support.
> 
> hack means modify or change... and thats exactly what is required.

Fair enough. But 'hack' implies a certain free-wheeling attitude.
(i.e., it's a fun thing to do.)  Configure code written with that
attitude has a tendency to blow up in ones face.

> ->  The configure code needs to:
> ->  
> ->    1) Autodetect the presence of the libraries you need. If it
> ->       doesn't find them, it should disable the portions of the
> ->       libraries it doesn't find.
> 
> well someone do thsi for me.. last time (about 3 months afgo) i used
> configure to auto detect for libs (looking for known symbols in them)
> it worked on my machine and faild on many other peolpes... for no
> apparent reason. 

Sounds like the usual fate of my first attempts much of my configure code

> I thus do not trust configure's lib detection. if you can make this
> work on multiple platforms and multipl boxes.. fine.

The stuff in the GIMP is working somewhat OK now, so I was planning
on borrowing that. (Thus hopefully avoiding the above mentioned 
problem of the first attempt not working).
 
> I know. Linux does support linking libraries. i could hand-load .so's in
> imlib easily (there's a function for it.. i forget the name.. i'll
> find it if need be).. but only in linux. This doesn't i believe work
> under any other os.

Under Linux (and other Elf platforms) you can link the library against
the dependencies, and have them brought in, without any
hand-loading. (I think you may be implying this in your first
sentence, but I can't tell). But as you say, it isn't portable.

> ->  I'd say, if the only reason you want it in GDK (for now) is the
> ->  initialization call, you might as well do a separate release.
> ->  That way, people can play around with it, without patching their
> ->  GTK sources. 
> 
> that is what i was planning unless others wanted it integrated now. i'm
> quite happy having my programs calling one extra init function if they
> want touse imlib... 

Sounds good :-)

Regards,
                                        Owen