Date: Mon, 5 Jul 1999 21:15:59 -0700 From: "David O'Brien" <obrien@FreeBSD.org> To: hutch@psfc.mit.edu Cc: ports@FreeBSD.org Subject: Re: TtH Description Correction Request Message-ID: <19990705211558.A526@dragon.nuxi.com> In-Reply-To: <Pine.LNX.4.10.9907050834470.11014-100000@silas.psfc.mit.edu>; from hutch@psfc.mit.edu on Mon, Jul 05, 1999 at 08:58:03AM -0400 References: <199907050548.WAA69607@freefall.freebsd.org> <Pine.LNX.4.10.9907050834470.11014-100000@silas.psfc.mit.edu>
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> Although I can't for the life of me see why XFree should be needed to
> run netpbm.
One of netpbm's parts is ``pdftopbm''.
$ ldd pdftopbm
libSM.so.6 => /usr/X11R6/lib/libSM.so.6 (0x28089000)
libICE.so.6 => /usr/X11R6/lib/libICE.so.6 (0x28091000)
libX11.so.6 => /usr/X11R6/lib/libX11.so.6 (0x280a5000)
libstdc++.so.3 => /usr/lib/libstdc++.so.3 (0x28138000)
libm.so.2 => /usr/lib/libm.so.2 (0x2816f000)
libc.so.3 => /usr/lib/libc.so.3 (0x28189000)
$ man pdftopbm
..snip..
BUGS
Pdftopbm uses X to do the rendering, so it is limited by
the capabilities and performance of the X server. In par-
ticular, high-resolution output requires lots of memory.
Also, non-scalable fonts will not look great.
So what do we do with the user who did not install X and tries to compile
netpbm? They get pissed because the seemless and easy FreeBSD Ports
Collection does not work. What do we do with the user that installs the
precompiled binary and then complains that they can't run ``pdftopbm''
and get some weird error message? (not every FreeBSD user is a developer
that would understand what the error messages is telling them)
> One thing I can't see with your dependency system is where it can stop.
> Shouldn't you also include the shell, bash for example. Why doesn't that
/bin/sh is part of the base OS.
> together with the rest of the operating system that is needed to run
I think we can assume a working base installation of FreeBSD. To assume
anything else becomes ridiculous.
> Or again, one could argue that every package that puts out a graphic
> output needs a display system like X to be useful, even if the program
> would run without it.
The issue is does it *LINK* against X11 libraries.
> Do you claim, for example, that emacs "requires" TeX, because it is
> capable of running it and this is a useful functionality?
No, but can you use all the binaries in the Emacs package w/o TeX being
installed? Does Emacs link against some TeX specific library?
> This is a rather close parallel to TtH calling TeX. I don't see how you
> can be consistent here.
2/3's of the things your software installs in /foo/bin require other
software to be installed or they simply will not work.
> I also deliberately emphasize in the documentation that the external
> programs like ps2gif etc are the user's responsibility, if they want to
> use them. Therefore, yes, it is your seemingly rather subjective
> dependency system for Freebsd ports that is the problem.
It also reduces our user support. It prevents tons of users complaining
in our mailing lists why they try to run ps2gif and it won't run. With a
system the size of FreeBSD (or any OS), you sometimes make decisions
based on support issues.
--
-- David (obrien@NUXI.com -or- obrien@FreeBSD.org)
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