[PD-dev] removing files from externals/build/src

[Frank Barknecht]

Hallo,
geiger hat gesagt: // geiger wrote:

> Well, I think that the real issues we suffer are social, and I am
> far from understanding those.
> For the rest, I don't know more, I just ask myself what is it that it is
> so hard to build externals. And I fear that we have produced the
> complexity by ourselves.

That's a very valid point worth to discuss somehow outside the
technical realization of how to build stuff and also only limited to
non-library-using, C externals. I'll call these "plain externals" now,
so flext, oggamp etc. are left out. Currently these are all in the
author's directories, because we were all too frightened to put all
our valued stuff together into one big repository. 

However the best solution would be, if every plain external in every 
authors subdirectory would be removed there and moved to a central
directory with a central Makefile (or SConstruct, if that was chosen). 

You first "build" solution was somehow doing exactly this, without
actually moving stuff, just by including the files. Maybe it would be
time to *actually move* all plain externals into one single, unified
directory? Like a big cleanup. The directory should not be called
"build" as this is not really an issue about building, maybe it could
be called "base-ext" or something like that, to make it clear, that
this is the common ground of the whole developer community.

This would be the place for all plain base externals by all authors.
It would require, that some externals get removed in their current
libraries and moved over to live as single externals in "base-ext"
too. Hans' installer then still would be very useful to "catch the
rest" of the externals: library-externals like oggplay, flext, Cyclone
in Max-compat mode etc. For the base externals he would just call
"make" in "base-ext"

One problem with this of course is: How to avoid conflicts when
submitting stuff. Should there be a "base-ext" maintainer? The
advantage would be, that the externals could get a real common release
cycle. Nameclashes with base-exts wouldn't occur anymore. (Every
external in a subdirectory, which clashes, would be hijacked and
removed by orks.) We could use a namespace like "base" for these
externals, and as default "base" would be available without namespace. 

Or am I just dreaming?
-- 
 Frank Barknecht                 _ ______footils.org_ __goto10.org__