On Fri, 2007-11-02 at 02:32 +0000, Glynn Clements wrote: > Brad Douglas wrote: > > > > > > Let's just all try and put together a complete list of what's > > > > > needed first, then I'll have a go at it. > > > > > > > > I haven't been following the thread, but caught something interesting in > > > > this message. > > > > > > > > It may be overkill, but I'd like to add configure checks for the final > > > > listing. What we have has served us well, but adding more checks takes > > > > little time and would help catch portability issues. > > > > > > > > Please cc: me on the final list unless someone decides this would be > > > > more clutter than solution. > > > > > > configure is meant for compile-time checks. You can still build GRASS > > > without the utilities which are used in scripts. Conversely, just > > > because the utilities are present on the host, it doesn't mean that > > > they will be present on the target. > > > > Why not check and disable parts that do not have the required > > program(s)? > > There's no need to disable a script just because the host doesn't have > the files it uses. The host doesn't need them and the target may well > have them.
I disagree only because most scripts do not exit informatively enough for users to discover and correct the problem. > > Target<->host isn't a great argument. You can say that with just about > > anything in configure. > > No; configure checks what is required for building a project. It > cannot detect whether you will be able to run it, and doesn't attempt > to. True, but there's no rule against it and I've seen other projects do it. > > In the vast majority of instances, GRASS is > > packaged. When I build a new RPM spec file, configure.in is very useful > > in revealing dependencies. > > You shouldn't be listing every program which some script *might* use > as a dependency. > > The dependencies for a GRASS RPM (etc) should be those packages > without which it will be largely unusable (e.g. GDAL, PROJ). It would > be quite annoying if you wanted to install it for use in a web > application and it insisted upon installing Tcl/Tk, X, OpenGL etc. Again, I disagree. I think you're underestimating the stupidity of humans. If someone needs it for a specific application, then they should build it themselves. I used to get quite a few emails until I significantly tightened up the dependencies. I now get 0 other than the occasional query about why GRASS has so many dependencies, which is why I now build two versions. However, I have no problem so long as you're nominating yourself to deal with every user that reports problems that are caused by missing programs. ;-) (Not terribly frequent, but frequent enough for me) As a compromise, how about just putting that list on the wiki or in grass6/rpm to make it easier for packagers to build dependencies (in the interest of quelling some of the non-problem reports)? -- 73, de Brad KB8UYR/6 <rez touchofmadness com> _______________________________________________ grass-dev mailing list grass-dev@grass.itc.it http://grass.itc.it/mailman/listinfo/grass-dev
