[Mesa-dev] libxml2 (python) dependency

[Corbin Simpson]

On Mon, Apr 18, 2011 at 4:48 PM, tom fogal <tfogal at sci.utah.edu> 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? :)

Python comes with three or four different XML parsers, and of those,
etree is both relatively speedy and sane. Certainly easier to handle
than libxml2 directly. If people want it to be even speedier, there's
a libxml2 library for Python, lxml, which has the etree API and is
quite nice.

This has been on my TODO list for a year or so, but no real useful
work has been made. Knowing that people actually care about it gives
me some incentive, but I can't promise anything.

~ C.

-- 
When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir? ~ Keynes

Corbin Simpson
<MostAwesomeDude at gmail.com>