Depending on external libraries

[Egbert Eich]

Daniel Stone writes:
 > > 
 > > This only happens because the monolithic build has the wrong
 > > 'convenience default', namely to use the libs in extra/ unless
 > > explicitely told not to.
 > 
 > But why are they there in the first place, then? If you're going to
 > default to the external ones, then why have extra/ at all? It just makes
 > things even more confusing than they already are, which is actually
 > quite an achievement.

I think I explained somewhere that these libs are there for convenience
reasons. One should go thru extras/ and see what else could go out.
It's possible that there are pieces that are not maintained anywhere
else any more. In this case we'd be stuck with them or we'd need to
replace them.

 > > Well, for this to work painlessly and the way it is intended the
 > > autotooled build system needs some polishing.
 > 
 > Sure - if you have any suggestions, I'd be happy to hear and/or
 > implement them (or allay your fears). Apologies if they came up in
 > another thread.

There are several. Do you want to discuss these on this list or 
somewhere else?

 > 
 > >  > Whether we should create a jhbuild configuration for the monolithic tree 
 > >  > and its dependencies is another issue; it would be trivial and perhaps 
 > >  > would help poor schmos...
 > > 
 > > If we employ a notion of 'external' and 'internal' dependencies
 > > ('internal' means dependencies which we have control over),
 > > document the external ones well and keep the internal ones simple
 > > jhbuild may be a huge overhead. Most people probably want to get
 > > 'everything' that we provide internally for bootstrapping and just
 > > updated pieces to fix problems. 
 > 
 > Look at XFree86/XOrg - FreeType, Expat, libxml (I think), zlib, Mesa,
 > what else? That's a metric crapload of dependencies in and of itself.
 > 

That's what I call 'external dependencies'.
Freetype: probably available on many systems nowdays.
          It was however required to build the Xserver module
	  and still is if you don't want to build an .so module.
	  Freetype is explicitely desinged to be included 
	  in projects and reconfigured for their purposes.
libxml: is gone. I've just deleted the last remains.
Expat: convenience.
zlib: can probably go. available almost everywhere today. convenience.
Mesa: The DRI client libs still have some strong dependencies into Mesa.
      I don't know when this is going to change. As soon as it does we
      can make it optional.

Egbert.