Depending on external libraries

[Egbert Eich]

Daniel Stone writes:
 > On Fri, Mar 12, 2004 at 06:49:49AM -0500, Kaleb S. KEITHLEY wrote:
 > > Here, on one of my systems??, there is no expat, and no option to install 
 > > it in a way that's remotely analogous to getting the RPM from the distro 
 > > CD or a web site and installing it.
 > 
 > With OS X, you have systems like autopackage, and I'm *sure* there's a
 > port for BSD.

If having such a thing is a prerequisite for the idea of separating
out pieces we don't maintain the idea is broken.
For this to work there *must* be another way. 
So far we have mostly heared arguments of the Linux community. 
We need to collect views from a lot of other communities before
we really know where the troubles are.

 > 
 > > Oh, of course I could always just go track down the expat source, build 
 > > it, and install it. (So please don't bother to tell me that that's all I 
 > > need to do.)
 > 
 > Or type something like 'jhbuild install expat', or whatever.

jhbuild requires python. You don't have python available everywhere.
python comes with a bunch of modules (like perl) just installing a
python binary someplace does not help.

 > 
 > Casting this as 'us vs them' is divisive and unproductive.
 > 

People use this kind of wording when they feel disenfranchised.

 > > Having the build automatically build them too also makes things easier.
 > 
 > Yes, in some regards. In others, it makes it more complicated.
 > 
 > > Asking people to edit their site.def or host.def to not build something 
 > > isn't asking too much IMO if a system already has the needed dependency. 
 > > That's a heck of a lot easier than having to hunt down the source for 
 > > something, build it, and install it.
 > 
 > Or typing one line. Hell, if you have a jhbuild X.Org recipe, you just
 > type 'jhbuild install xorg', or whatever.

Right. If you have python. For some you are moving the problem from
'where do I get lib libXy?' to 'where do I get python?'


Egbert.