[Clipart] Announcing Inkscape 0.40 Release

[Jonadab the Unsightly One]

Bryce Harrington <bryce at bryceharrington.com> writes:

> user's may encounter more trouble getting Inkscape installed on some
> platforms than in previous releases.  To help those who run into
> this issue, we're also providing 'Static Binary' packages that
> include these new libraries inside the package, and thus, the static
> releases are very large.

Very large?  8 Megs hasn't been a large size for an application
download in *years*.  There are *plugins* nearly twice that large.
(For example, I've got a copy of j2re-1_4_2_05-linux-i586.rpm sitting
around in my downloads directory weighing in at 14MB, and nobody
apologised for that being large.)

Honestly, I wish more applications would realease statically linked
binaries like this.

<rant intensity="50%">
  However, I still have to chase down a dependency: gtk2.  I have
  gtk2, of course, but apparently it's not the latest and greatest
  version.  So I downloaded that, but now I need other stuff...

  error: Failed dependencies:
        libglib2.0 >= 2.4.0 is needed by libgtk+2.0_0-2.4.9-9mdk
        libpango1.0 >= 1.4.0 is needed by libgtk+2.0_0-2.4.9-9mdk
        libgtk+-x11-2.0_0 = 2.4.9-9mdk is needed by libgtk+2.0_0-2.4.9-9mdk

  I need to do this anyway, since there's a new Gimp coming out that
  I'll want, but this underscores the single largest problem IMO in
  open-source today: excessive use of dynamic linking makes upgrades
  painful beyond the bounds of all reason.
  
  I can understand the desire to link inkscape dynamically against
  GTK, because *lots* of stuff links against GTK, and it makes sense
  to install one copy (of each major version).

  But I do NOT understand why GTK is linked dynamically against
  libglib and pango.  Virtually nothing else besides GTK uses those
  libraries, so there's no good reason for the dynamic linking:

  root at vestibule ~/download :) # rpm -q --whatrequires libpango1.0
  libgtk+2.0_0-2.2.4-2mdk
  root at vestibule ~/download :) # rpm -q --whatrequires libglib2.0
  libgtk+2.0_0-2.2.4-2mdk
  libgtop2.0_0-2.0.5-1mdk
  root at vestibule ~/download :) # rpm -q --whatrequires libgtk+-x11-2.0_0
  gtk+2.0-2.2.4-2mdk
  libgtk+2.0_0-devel-2.2.4-2mdk
  root at vestibule ~/download :) #

  Not only is GTK quite pointlessly dynamically linked against libglib
  and pango, but it *itself* is subdivided into two packages, for
  absolutely no good reason.
  
  This is why I only have time to upgrade stuff at home, and at work
  I'm still using Gnome 1.4 -- at work, I can't justify the time to
  chase down a hillion jillion dependencies.  I shouldn't have to do
  it at home either.  Nobody should.  Hard drive sizes being what they
  are, it no longer makes sense to save a couple of measley megabytes
  by inflicting superfluous pain on the user.  Inkscape is an
  application I use with some frequency:  as such, it's welcome to
  a few megabytes of drive space.
</rant>

One can only imagine the trouble I'd have put myself through if I'd
downloaded the non-statically-linked version of Inkscape.  <<shudder>>

The take-home message is this:  Static linking is GOOD, and the world
needs more of it.

-- 
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