On 2012-09-30 14:41-0700 phil rosenberg wrote:
> Hi Alan
> I was just considering that one negative brought up regarding supporting
> shapefiles was the addition of extra dependencies. I sometimes feel (probably
> wrongly) that if only a basic bit of functionality is needed then it's easier
> to have a basic bit of code that does exactly what I (we) need rather than
> add an extra dependency and API (and possibly build system) that goes
> overboard on features. Maybe this is a Windows hangup as a lot of open source
> code has build systems which are rather biased towards linux (even CMAKE
> setups can be guilty of this) so sometimes it can be a few days work to get a
> library built and more than once I've been totally unable to do it. This kind
> of thing is often quite daunting to people who haven't done it before.
>
> I'll have a look at shapelib anyway and see if compiles easily on
Windows.
Hi Phil:
My impression is lots of Windows developers still think exactly like
you do about dependencies because historically the handling of library
dependences was done so poorly on that platform ("dependency hell" and
all that). However, CMake is beginning to change those Windows
developer attitudes because it makes software builds on Windows so
simple with correct library dependencies implemented
semi-automatically. The KitWare developers for CMake itself have a
very large amount of build expertise on Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux
platforms, and that expertise shines through in CMake itself. As a
result huge numbers of developers have started using CMake for their
software project's build system and a substantial fraction of those
(perhaps even the majority from all the Windows-oriented traffic on
the CMake mailing list) are Windows developers. So I don't think
Windows (and Mac OS and Linux) developers could go wrong by
implementing a CMake-based build system for any software they are
interested in.
Therefore, if you run into any trouble with that nmake-based build of
shapelib, please contact me off list since I think I could help you
straighten out any such build issues by implementing a proper
CMake-based build system for shapelib. I estimate putting together
such a build system for a simple software project like shapelib would
only require a few hours of my time. Also, I have just now completed
an upgrade from Debian squeeze (stable) to Debian wheezy (testing) so
I have access to a shiny new Wine version of the Windows platform to
check a CMake-based build system for shapelib on that platform.
Alan
__________________________
Alan W. Irwin
Astronomical research affiliation with Department of Physics and Astronomy,
University of Victoria (astrowww.phys.uvic.ca).
Programming affiliations with the FreeEOS equation-of-state
implementation for stellar interiors (freeeos.sf.net); the Time
Ephemerides project (timeephem.sf.net); PLplot scientific plotting
software package (plplot.sf.net); the libLASi project
(unifont.org/lasi); the Loads of Linux Links project (loll.sf.net);
and the Linux Brochure Project (lbproject.sf.net).
__________________________
Linux-powered Science
__________________________
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