Subject: Re: [linux-audio-dev] plugins etc
From: Paul Davis (pbd_AT_Op.Net)
Date: Fri Jul 20 2001 - 00:06:49 EEST
>> >i have somehow managed to be unaware of ardour in the time i have been
>>
>> good thing. ardour is under development. its not a tool suitable for
>> most people's usage. i doubt if more than 10% of the people on the
>> list could even get it compiled without quite a bit of handholding.
>
> IMHO, this is a bug not a feature.
i have never claimed otherwise. but read on ...
> I was also amazed when I saw you post this...
>
>"there are people (reasonably skilled programmers) who tried to get ardour
>to run on their machine for 2 days and never succeeded."
>-- http://lists.debian.org/debian-wnpp-0105/msg00045.html
>
> What are your plans on making ardour usable for the other 90% of
>us? Let me know if you would like some help with packaging.
its nothing to do with packaging. in fact, packaging is the root of
most of the problems.
the problems come from the fact that Ardour uses *many* 3rd party
libraries to provide functionality that it needs, rather than
reimplementing the functionality. i thought that was efficient and
sensible. in addition, i do not attempt to include the source for
these libraries as part of Ardour, partly because they are still
improving and partly because they are sometimes large and partly
because there's a good chance you already have some of them.
however, things start to get a little crazy when people are using
pre-compiled versions of these libraries, compiled by people they've
never met, on systems they've never used, and then expecting that when
they then link ardour against them, everything will work smoothly.
not to mention minor and major changes in the APIs for some of the
libraries; ALSA is the obvious problem, but libxml++ and others have
all caused problems with this.
i have yet to meet any Ardour users who, when they build *all* the
required libraries (except for libc and similarly "fundamental"
libraries) from source and install them themselves, have any problems
building Ardour.
however, hardly anyone does this. instead, they have downloaded
an RPM from RedHat and then linked Ardour against it. it turns out
that RedHat goofed when they built the RPM, and I have to explain how
"that particular RPM doesn't work". who comes out looking the worse
here? you go figure ...
not to mention problems with RedHat's recent introduction of a C++
compiler which is binary incompatible with g++ 2.95, meaning that if
any of the libraries you use are compiled with a different compiler,
you're totally screwed, though you *might* not find out till
run-time.
the same problems will occur with any binary distribution of Ardour
that is dynamically linked.
so, no, i don't need help packaging. i need help to convince people to
(1) stop using packages and (2) to avoid RH7.X and (3) to convince
package maintainers to *never* distribute modified versions of source
available as a tarball.
building Ardour is "simple" if your definition of "simple" includes:
1) downloading the source for a dozen or so libraries, making sure
you get exactly the right version. some of them are
only available via CVS at this time.
2) compiling and installing all of them, in the correct order
3) compiling and installing the libraries that do come with ardour,
in the correct order
4) compiling ardour
5) installing ardour, including understanding ALSA's new
~/.asoundrc file
personally, i wouldn't call that "simple", and i also don't see any
easy way to make it so.
--p
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b28 : Fri Jul 20 2001 - 00:07:13 EEST