[haiku-development] Re: What to do with termcap?
- From: Ingo Weinhold <ingo_weinhold@xxxxxx>
- To: haiku-development@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Fri, 01 Feb 2013 09:37:01 +1300
"Stephan Aßmus" <superstippi@xxxxxx> wrote:
>For what it's worth, I totally agree, that the externalization of
>packages has often made things more complicated. I agree that some
>software has a tricky build system and depends on certain compiler
>flags
>to work correctly like for example ffmpeg. It is sometimes error-prone
>to replace their build system with Haiku's.
Most packages build with no or only small Haiku specific patches. Updating them
to a newer version is usually just a matter of rebuilding them. If they are in
Haiku's build system you always have to be very careful to do reproduce all
changes from the package's build system. That can be tedious and is error prone
(e.g. look in bash's history for an example).
>Anyway, I think the important thing is the testing. And just because a
>package has accepted all Haiku patches at one point doesn't mean there
>is no maintainance by Haiku developers necessary anymore. Haiku simply
>doesn't get tested going forward. It isn't clear at all whetehr a
>future
>version of a package even still compiles on Haiku, let alone works
>correctly. I don't see how externalizing packages makes things any
>easier.
Automated builds for the HaikuPorts packages can at least address the
compilation problem. The testing issue is one we have either way.
> Just look at freetype for example. Now one can't enable
>sub-pixel rendering without serious effort.
If you think of the users who don't build their own Haiku, the never could do
that. The obvious solution will come with package management. There''ll simply
be two versions of the freetype package and it will be easy for both end users
and developers to choose the one they want.
> And what about ICU. Is
>everyone involved thinking it made things easier to pull it out of the
>tree? Looking from the outside, it seemed like it resulted in a lot of
>extra work.
I think some of that is due to keeping all the incomplete ports happy. I don't
consider that much of a problem. Generally building packages will become easier
with better tool support.
>I am aware that it may sound like I mean we should put everything into
>the Haiku tree and have no external packages at all. I don't think
>that's a good idea either, but I specifically wonder about those
>build-dependency packages.
Keeping them in the tree is a mess IMO. These packages are usually also needed
as dependencies of other packages, so we end up having to reproduce their build
systems' installation procedure and once we go PM even build packages for them
from out of our tree.
CU, Ingo
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