Subject: libglade summary
From: Joaquín Cuenca Abela (cuenca@celium.net)
Date: Sat Feb 10 2001 - 09:14:19 CST
Now that everything seems to be calm, I would to post a little summary
of the problems of libglade that prevent him to be an Abi dependecie,
and possible solutions:
1. It depends in gnome
False. It's only that the packagers seems to have little interest
building libglade with the --without-gnome configure option. We can
provide binaries of libglade compiled with gnome support turned off.
2. It depends in libxml-1, and depending in expat & libxml-1 or
libxml-1 & libxml-2 is a very bad idea
True (the first part) and (partially) false (the second one).
We're not in windows. We can have in the same system two different
versions of the same library without any problem. The only conflict
between libxml1 & libxml2 was that their -dev packages both included a
little xml-config script. Now this problem is solved, because libxml2
has changed this script to xml2-config.
Now, it seems (and here I agree) and it is a waste to have two different
libraries to do the same work. But we're in the real world, and until
the new libxml2 is universally used, and all the legacy apps upgrade,
the users will have to live but this problem (now I agree that it's not
very usual to have an app that requires at the same time *both*
versions).
3. It's not portable (mainly to AIX & HP-UX systems)
False.
http://www-frec.bull.com/cgi-bin/list_dir.cgi/download/ftp.software.ibm.com/aix/freeSoftware/aixtoolbox/RPMS/ppc/libglade/
http://www-frec.bull.com/cgi-bin/list_dir.cgi/download/ftp.software.ibm.com/aix/freeSoftware/aixtoolbox/RPMS/ppc/libxml/
http://ftp.kornet.net/pub/other-os/hp-ux/Gnome/libglade-0.14
weage.freeservers.com/gnome_hpux.html
Both libglade and libxml run in hp-ux & aix.
Kevin Vajk has kindly offered to test that libglade compiles ok without
gnome support in his hp-ux system (but it seems to me that the fact that
there are libglade packages out there with gnome support should imply
that it's possible to have non gnome version of libglade in hp-ux
systems & aix systems).
4. It requires gettext to do i18n, and we don't support gettext
True.
5. It introduces a new dependencie (besides the libxml problem)
True. That's the point.
===========================================================
So, to me, the real problems are libxml1 and gettext (as soon as Kevin
says that it compiles ok).
To gain gettext support should be pretty simple, and libglade is not the
main raison (gettext is good, I explained its advantages long ago in a
lengthy mail). The main problem to gain gettext support is that we
don't have autoconf/automake support and I'm not a makefile's guru.
The libxml1 problem is a bit tricky... a solution may be to port
libglade to expat & libxml2... suggestions?
What do you think?
Please, no flames.
Cheers,
-- Joaquin Cuenca Abela cuenca@celium.net
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