On Tue, 16 Nov 2010 20:05:26 +1300
Simon Geard <[email protected]> wrote:

> Problem is, that's a *very* hazy line. Both glib and gtk+ are Gnome
> packages - developed by the same people, released on the same schedules.
> But they're also used by packages like gvim that don't use any of the
> rest of Gnome. So do they go in the BLFS-Gnome book, or the basic one?


gtk+ (and glib) are needed by most common GUI applications. Anything
beyond core X windows startup will usually require these as they are
the premier GUI library for Linux, so I would include them, but not the
rest of Gnome. i.e., one should be able to run Gimp, Firefox, etc.
 
I even was ticked that inkscape needed things like libboost which was
a 20mb+ download. Blah! (But, I did eventually get inkscape running.)

I suspect that the issue will eventually force itself as the sheer
weight of all the dependencies causes a problem, not only for BLFS,
but even for Linux application developers and maintainers.

There should be a core set of libraries that Linux GUI applications
can expect to have available on just about every GUI-capable system
- gtk2, image and video rasterizers and handlers, PDF/PS rendering
and printing, font handling, etc.

But, at some point the complexity grows to a point where an additional
amount does more harm than good. For me, Gnome et al. has went beyond
that point.


  Cheers,

  Mike
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