Depending on external libraries

[Keith Packard]

--==_Exmh_1038452182P
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii


Around 13 o'clock on Mar 11, Egbert Eich wrote:

> This may be a feasable way, also I find the idea to have a tool that
> automagically pulls sources of SW from the internet without me explicitely
> saying so a little bit scary.

It depends on how the jhbuild dependencies are structured; you can point
the dependencies at known good versions of the software within your
control, or even direct the code to use pre-installed versions of the
libraries where appropriate.  

How the default jhbuild rules are constructed is a careful balancing act --
gnome (I think) steps over the line a bit in building known versions of
Xft, fontconfig and Render instead of relying on the system verisons.  I
simply reconfigured my jhbuild script to use the existing versions of those
libraries and things worked better (for me).

> This only happens because the monolithic build has the wrong
> 'convenience default', namely to use the libs in extra/ unless
> explicitely told not to.

We can change which fontconfig/freetype is used by default, but we can't
use external versions of Xft, Xrender, Xcursor (et al) in the monolithic
tree.  All we can do is to avoid installing them, but that will lead to 
troubles for users who simply download the X bits and build them only to 
discover that they won't run without additional software...

> 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. 

jhbuild is just a meta-tool, and not a large one at that.  It is the 
"normal" way gnome developers create working environments that are 
insulated from changes by other projects.  I suggest we work to make that 
a good environment for us as well.

-keith



--==_Exmh_1038452182P
Content-Type: application/pgp-signature

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.2.4 (GNU/Linux)
Comment: Exmh version 2.3.1 11/28/2001

iD8DBQFAUJAuQp8BWwlsTdMRAor/AKCkpcyuwkJwBy/zS+WXbHnBh99RZACdFd3x
+07t0MS2bVYgR08AVaWM3ss=
=AB8L
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

--==_Exmh_1038452182P--