[gst-devel] location of include headers

[Christian Fredrik Kalager Schaller]

I agree with you thomasvs, solution b seems the best. And getting it in
before 0.4.0 would also be nice since it lessens the chance of people
having compile problems when upgrading.

Christian


On Sun, 2002-06-16 at 09:20, Thomas Vander Stichele wrote:
> Hello people,
> 
> I have looked at some other projects as to where they install their 
> headers and come to the conclusion that we might think about changing 
> ours.
> 
> The problem is fairly simple : some of our headers *need* to point to 
> other headers in the same package using < > which sets the compiler off 
> looking for headers in the standard locations and the user-supplied 
> locations.  They *need* to do this because these headers get installed 
> system-wide and could thus be used by external apps as well.
> 
> The way I see it is that, you should use "..." if the header is in the 
> source tree only and not meant to be installed, and <...> if the header 
> you're doing this in is meant to be installed, as well as the header 
> you're pulling in.
> 
> Now, this causes problems.  Take the editor for example.  The 
> editor.h file in gst/editor is the entry point.  It contains includes 
> like this :
> 
> #include <gst/editor/gsteditorbin.h>
> 
> So that, when an external app wants to work with the installed gst-editor, 
> this will correctly point to this other installed header.
> 
> Now, there's a problem with this, and that's why I suspect the other 
> projects (gtk, eel, pango, freetype, ...) use another level in their 
> include installation.
> 
> The problem is this : when you already have a previously installed set of 
> header files, and you include them as <gst/editor/gsteditorbin.h>, the 
> installed set will take preference to be included, since they are in the 
> standard include prefix.
> 
> The other projects basically solve this by sticking in another level, so 
> that the dir from which everything starts needs to be EXPLICITLY added to 
> the compile lines.
> 
> So what does this mean for us ?
> 
> We could go two ways :
> 
> a) drop the gst/ prefix from all the #include lines and add 
> -I/$(prefix)/include/gst to all the compile lines that need it
> 
> b) put all gst header files in something like
>    $(prefix)/include/gstreamer and start the tree from there
>    (so that editor.h would end up in 
>   $(prefix)/include/gstreamer/gst/editor/editor.h)
> 
> 
> I prefer b) since 1) we need to change less source code and 2) other 
> projects do it similarly.
> 
> I'm sure all of you have at some point been stung by things failing to 
> compile where the ultimate reason was that some old header stuff was 
> floating around.  This should not be allowed to happen.
> 
> So, what do you think ? Agree ? Not ? If y'all agree I'll work on doing 
> this quickly.  I'd prefer to get this done before 0.4.0.
> 
> Thanks,
> Thomas
> 
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