[Mesa-dev] libxml2 (python) dependency

[Dan Nicholson]

On Mon, Apr 18, 2011 at 11:14 PM, Tilman Sauerbeck
<tilman at code-monkey.de> wrote:
> Ian Romanick [2011-04-18 17:12]:
>> 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
>
> What about generating them at 'make dist' time, too...?
> That way the Python dependency would only hit developers, but not
> people building from proper release tarballs.

I think this is a good idea, but it might be a little difficult with
the mesa build machinery.

--
Dan