Re: gep-1

[Murray Cumming <murrayc usa net>]

On Mon, 2002-08-26 at 21:53, Mark McLoughlin wrote:
> > c) I am against conditional compilation. Only the default build will be
> > packaged as RPM as debs, so people won't actually have access to the C++
> > stuff. I don't have enough confidence that package builders will be able
> > to cope with this situation. We need a good reason to make our lives
> > this difficult. You seem to have a non-specific fear of the merge, but
> > it's hard to justify that given that the branch is there and working and
> > people are running GNOME2 with it.
> 
> 	Yes I know you want it there so that packagers have no choice
> *other* than to package them with the core. However, I'm not interested
> in *forcing* the availability of the C++ bindings.

No, you misunderstand. I want it somewhere. We worked on a branch
because we were told that the language binding module thing didn't
exists anymore and because a merge was the best way to do it. ORBit2
didn't support a separate ORBit/C++ so that project was effectively
discontinued.

This is not about forcing C++ on anyone. It is about making it available
to the people who want it. I believe that conditional compilation will
mean that it is not available on packaged systems, and that would
effectively kill it.

> > In the absence of strong arguments, I would choose to stick with the
> > plan that we have. It already has working code which demonstrates that
> > it poses no threat to ORBit2.
> >
> > I would prefer complete merge or complete separation, rather than
> > something in-between, for the sake of simplicity. And I would prefer
> > complete merge because it requires less work.
> 
> 	Okay fair enough. I would be swayed towards the separation of
> the two then. We already have bindings language bindings that rely on
> ORBit2 internals (although it should be possible to make the scripting
> bindings not do this) so the c++ binding would just become another in
> the set.

Can you give us some kind of timescale for you to do this work? We have
already spent a lot of time on the branch and for the last few weeks
we've just been waiting for the merge. I don't look forward to yet more
delay. It seems a little late to be this idealistic.

-- 
Murray Cumming
murrayc@usa.net
www.murrayc.com