[Mesa-dev] libxml2 (python) dependency

[Ian Romanick]

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On 04/18/2011 04:48 PM, tom fogal wrote:
> Hey all,
> 
> We recently became more aware of a dependency on python's libxml2 for
> building Mesa.  We're not as proactive as we should be, but tend to
> upgrade Mesa every few releases; I think this was a jump from 7.8 to 7.10.
> 
> Anyway, libxml2 is a bit arduous for us because it's not installed by
> default on Linux or Mac.  On Linux, it's easy to grab via a package
> manager, but still does not exist by default on some distros.  In
> general, non-standard dependencies are difficult because they make our
> (already very large) software stack more complex.
> 
> Is the package truly needed?  I think it's used to parse spec files and
> autogenerate trampolines or callbacks or something like that.  Didn't we
> used to have plain text files for that?  Any reason we can't go back to
> something simpler?  Does code speak loud than words, here? :)

We haven't used plain-text for years.  What has changed is that the
generated files are no longer tracked in source control.  They are
generated at compile time because anything else is just nuts. :)  I know
that Kristian and Chia-I were working on this code most recently.
Perhaps they will have additional insight.
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