Re: [linux-audio-dev] packaging

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Subject: Re: [linux-audio-dev] packaging
From: Paul Davis (pbd_AT_Op.Net)
Date: Fri Jul 20 2001 - 06:00:18 EEST


> Can anyone name for me a widely-used Open Source application that
>(1) is only available from CVS and (2) requires compiliation of all of its
>supporting libraries from scratch?

widely used is not fair. ardour is not widely used. sourceforge
contains many such projects.

also, can anyone name a open source application that uses:

   libguile
   libxml
   libxml++
   libsndfile
   libsigc++
   libltdl
   libgmodule
   libgtkmm
   libgtk
   libgdk
   libasound
   + 5 further libraries from the same author?

or even any comparable list of libraries? just to list those that
might not be already present on your system ...
   
> Ardour isn't the first Open Source application to use external
>libraries. Look at some other Open Source projects. What do they do?

i have spent days, perhaps even weeks looking at this.

i have not been able to find any comparable project.

Reasons:

  1) Ardour uses libraries from quasimodo.org that are used by
      other applications, but are not available as binary packages
      at this time. Thus, it is an application not available
      in binary that depends on libraries that are not available
      in binary.

  2) C++. C++ libraries can be very sensitive to the build
      environment, making prebuilt binaries much more likely
      to be a source of run-time errors than with C.
 
  3) the additional libraries written by me are not specific
      to this application. life would get somewhat simpler
      if i pretended that libmidi++, libpbd, libgtkmmext
      and so forth were all specific to Ardour. Then I could
      (1) package them into the same source tree and (2) not
      bother to install them before compiling ardour itself.

      many other applications that come with libraries do this;
      they include the library source as a subdir, build it,
      then link to it "locally".
      
      but i've tried that, and it was a real pain in the ass
      for me as well as anyone trying to compile (say) Ardour
      *and* SoftWerk.

  4) the dependencies on libraries with rapidly changing APIs.
       ALSA is the principal culprit here, but libxml++ and
       others have caused problems in this area.

       and of course, work on Ardour quite frequently prompts
       changes in libaudioengine, libgtkmmext and so forth.
       so the idea that you can "preinstall" these libraries
       and then just "forget about them" isn't really
       possible.

If someone has an actual, real-world, working example of how to do all
this stuff better, bring it on. The library stuff is a total
hassle. But I've been hacking Unix systems and open source for 13 or
14 years now, and I don't see any good solutions for what is at heart
caused by a bunch of moving goalposts. It would be great to find one.

--p


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