Hello Jan,
> I have now received a contribution from Xiangxian Wang who has ported
> the plugin to OpenVRML 0.16.5 (and Boost). What should I do with it?
> Should I replace the current version with this new code (and introduce
> Boost dependency just to load VRML) or keep it separate (introducing a
> maintenance/support nightmare with duplicated code)?
Another alternative would be to decide that the current OpenVRML
plugin works well enough, freeze it as is, and integrate the new one
separately with the understanding that you are only maintaining that
one. If someone in the community still wants to use the old one, and
finds it lacking, then they can work on improving it themselves, but
as far as official OSG support, it has reached "end-of-life" and is
only included for backwards compatibility.
OTOH, I do not use VRML myself (at the moment), so I can't comment on
how useful the actual move from OpenVRML 0.14.3 to 0.16.5 is. If
0.16.5 does nothing more (w.r.t. loading a VRML file into an OSG
program) than 0.14.3 did, but just adds a boost dependency, then is it
really useful to make a new plugin that uses 0.16.5?
A part of me thinks that boost is a big dependency to pull in just to
read VRML files. OTOH, there is an easy binary installer for boost on
Windows now, and on Linux most users can install it through their
package manager, so most users will probably not need to compile it
themselves (which takes a very long time and is a bit "involved",
IIRC). So it may not be that big a deal. Maybe actual users of the
current VRML plugin can comment on whether they would be willing to
install boost, given that the new plugin gives such and such new
functionality. I think that would be a good first question to ask.
> I have tried to look also into the possibility of merging the code to
> one file and use conditional compilation to choose which version should
> be built. However Mr. Wang's changes are very intrusive due to the way
> how Boost is used by OpenVRML. It would be an unreadable mess
> interspersed by a lot of #ifdefs.
I agree, this is not really an option if it makes maintenance harder
than keeping both versions alive and separate...
J-S
--
______________________________________________________
Jean-Sebastien Guay [EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://whitestar02.webhop.org/
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