Richard Frith-Macdonald wrote:
On 11 Feb 2007, at 04:33, Matt Rice wrote:
On 2007-02-10 17:34:59 -0800 Nicola Pero
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
The only objection i've heard from gnustep.pc is "Its not the way
GNUstep stores information".
Here is a refresher --
1. it adds an external dependency upon which *everything* would depend
an entirely optional dependency, people could continue sourcing
GNUstep.sh.
That implies that either you expect people to write makefiles which are
deliberately non-portable (ie they make use of pkg-config and don't work
on systems where pkg-config is not installed) or you require them to
adopt some convention for having the makefile determine whether
pkg-config is available, use it if is, and tell them to source
GNUstep.sh if it isn't (presumably include several lines at the top of
each makefile). To while it could be optional, it could not be optional
in a transparent way.
So Nicola's objection stands .... it adds a dependency, or unpleasent
consequences of working round the natural dependency.
No, you make GNUstep-make do this for the user. Doesn't this seem obvious?
2. it is slower
-make is not a bottleneck...
for example on my machine....
-make building base here takes 2 minutes 3 seconds...
make when base is already built takes 2 seconds..
where adding this stuff to make would be 0.006th of a second per
invocation of pkg-config/gnustep-config
this argument is hogwash.
I agree that performance is not a significant issue ... however, where
we are looking at two alternative solutions providing identical benefits
in all other respects, this could swing the argument.
They are not identical in *all* other respects, and that's frankly the
point.
3. it is designed for something else (which adds complexity)
It does exactly the same thing gnustep-config.sh does.
that adds no complexity...
No difference in complexity of usage, but gnustep-sh parses a simpler
file format and uses simpler code so is less complex / more maintainable
in that sense. However I suspect the issue is pretty much unimportant.
Exactly, and when it's unimportant, frankly, familiarity for newcompers
should be taken into consideration. It's absolutely not being, and in
fact, it's been rejected repeatedly by Nicola. I dare say you are not
approaching this conversation from a rational point of view, and perhaps
have too much emotional investment in make, something you care deeply
about. This is an all-too-common problem with OSS developers. Take a few
steps back and look at things from everyone elses' perspective, instead
of trying to shoehorn your own beliefs into everyone else's perspective.
Dependophobia is a treatable condition, and it's usually illogical
anyways, most definitely in this case, where it's purely an optional
dependency, and where most people are going to have pkgconfig on their
system anyways, due to the fact that hundreds of other libs on their
system already depend on it. Once again, pkgconfig is a red herring
under windows. It's not needed nor is it necessary. Windows has its own
mechanisms.
4. it requires rewriting and redesigning stuff with no clear advantages
there are clear advantages...
now I can add stuff to configure for things *using* gnustep-make which
attempts to see if
GNUstep libraries exist.
there could be a way to bootstrap gnustep-make to "just work" without
any gnustep specific
environment variables.
Those are not advantages of pkg-config. Those are examples of where
the use of pkg-config would provide the same functionality. Early on in
this thread Nicola suggested both gnustep-config.sh and the use of a
makefile fragment as ways of doing the same thing, so pkg-config
provides no advantage in this respect.
They advantages in that many other people already know how the hell they
work, and pretty much any newcomer does NOT know how this other funky
system we invented works; even if it's very simple, this RAISES the
barrier to entry. It does not lower it. This is why the whole dependency
argument isn't as critical as some of us seem to believe it is.
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