On Sun, Nov 28, 2010 at 09:29:28PM +0000, Glynn Clements wrote: > > Hamish wrote: > > > > > If the only available packages (RPM, .deb, etc) insist > > > > upon installing GUI libraries, complain to the people who > > > > make the packages. > > > > Paolo: > > > OK, so, now I'm complaining ;) : packagers, please have > > > your saying here. > > > > disk space is very cheap. package maintaining time is not. IMHO > > unused libraries & a couple extra packages do no real harm > > It isn't "a couple". Once you link against wx, you're looking at ~60 > extra libraries. > > I'd suggest that the core GRASS package shouldn't list X, wxWidgets or > (in 6.x) Python as dependencies. > > It shouldn't be necessary to split the actual GRASS distribution into > GUI and non-GUI components. Put everything in the non-GUI package, and > have a separate GUI package which is empty (or contains a single dummy > file if the packaging system doesn't allow empty packages) and exists > solely to hold the GUI-specific dependencies. >
As said in another mail of mine, it is not a problem brute-splitting GUI dependencies (e.g. current squeeze release for 6.4 only *suggests* wxpython dependencies). Moving GUI-related binaries in different packages is a pain to maintain, but theoretically it can also be done. It remains a brute hack anyway, which is a symptom of a fundamental design problem: the whole system is theoretically layered and modular, but in fact it cannot be really componentized in a *clean* way. Something I find basically disturbing and not elegant, sorry my purism. BTW, I tend to disagree about considering GUI maintainance not influent in the releasing cycle. It *is* influent and caused many of the past/present windows/macos delays. Having a sort of grass-toolbox and grass-gui sub-projects could help a lot (like CNES does with OTB and Monteverdi). And like it or not, there are people that do not use the default GUI or a GUI at all. Splitting would gain consensus about the core, which is IMVHO the true value of GRASS. Of course, my 2 cents, as always. -- Francesco P. Lovergine _______________________________________________ grass-dev mailing list [email protected] http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/grass-dev
