Subject: Re: [linux-audio-dev] User Interface
From: Paul Davis (pbd_AT_Op.Net)
Date: Thu Jul 26 2001 - 19:30:38 EEST
>True, but I suppose ardour is any better?
No, Ardour is not better. However, the set of libraries on which it
depends is smaller than GNOME.
> I want to try ardour, but gave up tr
>ying to compile it? WHY? Because the libraries you use are 1) obscure and
>hard to locate 2) there's at least one library that you have (had?) ONLY cvs
>access to, making it for developers only.
It *is* for developers only at this point. I've never tried to make
any other claim.
>3) I'd rather use something that all ows me to record music rather
>than compiling/installing several, several unstable libraries to get
>it to even compile, much less link correctly. I simply gave up on
>it. Besides, I can go download Cubase and be recording in about 5
>minutes. No compiling needed. No searching for obscure unstable
>libraries to compile, which in turn often require installing OTHER
>libraries.
Excellent. Then use Cubase. Its a very good program. If it ran on
Linux and came with source code, I would never have started working on
Ardour but would have spent my time improving Cubase.
>I'm not disparging all the work you do. As a developer myself, I know
>that you put alot of time into the code, and I respect you for
>that. In fact, I'd love to try ardour out. I bought an rme card
>because of linux drivers. But it's the librar y thang.....
As pointed out earlier, there are a total of about 22 libraries that
ardour needs that you *might* not find on any regular X-equipped linux
system. Of these, 13 are stable 3rd party libraries, most of them part
of the GTK+/Gtk-- constellation, and all available as binaries.
So if you have Gtk-- properly installed, you've just got 4 additional
stable libraries to install (art_lgpl, gtk-canvas, guile, gdbm).
Then there is libsndfile, which Erik hasn't been working on much
recently, and so even though its not finished it could be considered
stable.
Then there are 5 of my own libraries that are "moderately unstable",
plus alsa-lib (hah!) plus libardour itself.
Why don't I make my libraries available as RPMs or debian packages?
Because I have better things to do with my development time than
rebuilding, reuploading, re-doing a web page every time I fix a bug in
a library. Thats why Ardour is currently a developer only system, and
its why I use CVS, because I assume that developers will be happy
using CVS because of the ease and low cost of updating it provides.
That said, there have been very, very few changes in 4 of the 5 of my
libraries in the last 6 months, which may be a sign that its time to
make them available as RPMs and debian packages.
libardour won't be available as an RPM or whatever for quite some
time, since it is often revised several times a day.
>One thing that would help, is on the ardour web page (I haven't
>checked out th e web page lately- sorry) , have links to all the
>libraries needed. Much bette
the "requirements" page already did this, and i just updated it to
include a couple of new links and to revise the old ones.
http://ardour.sourceforge.net/requirements.html
>or even better, links to any binaries that the dist's. might have available.
its proven *extremely* problematic to use binaries of C++
libraries. C++ is much more susceptible than C to compile-time
conditions. in addition, the "dists" have become increasingly
incompatible due to compiler/library issues, and furthermore, they
include code changes that are not in the original source ball, making
it more difficult for me to track bug reports accurately.
--p
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