[PD] Re: pd packages

[Frank Barknecht]

Hallo,
guenter geiger hat gesagt: // guenter geiger wrote:

>  Proposal:
> 
>   What about moving these directories that can not be built as
>   single externals out ot "externals" and give them their own
>   subproject. This way, externals based on flext would be part of
>   flext, and built together with flext. ?

I gave this a half day's worth of thought (and I think, we should move
this topic over to pd-dev, which I'm doing now).

Here are some of my results. 

*** flext itself needs a special treatment. ***

It doesn't fall into any of the current categories. It isn't an
external, it isn't a library of its own, but it is needed to compile a
bunch of other externals (by Thomas and me and maybe more.)

It is very tempting to compile flext-ernals together with flext,
because of compiler issues, but they should get a package of their
own, or be included in the pd-externals package. The alternative would
be to build-depend on a installed pd-flext-package. This looks
cleaner, but might make things very complicated in the end
(i.e. one would need to take care of version-depends and so on). But
somehow putting flext-ernals in the same package as flext just
*feels* wrong.

*** Other dependencies ***

Having externals only rely on themselves makes things easy for
packagers and compilers. But 85 % of my externals depend on other
libraries, and in this case it makes sense, IMO (of course).  For
example (flext-)iiwu makes iiwusynth available to Pd, which is very
useful and it would be a wasted effort to try to reimplement
libiiwusynth just for a 257 lines long external. But then flext can
depend on STK and SndObj, to make a lot of things easier for external
developers.

Libraries might not be available and need to be packed as well (as you
did with SndObj). Because of this, I would vote for a pd-externals
package like now including externals without dependencies. But what to
do with the rest?  Each package might need different libraries, some
need flext, some fftw, ...

I have no clear idea how to structure this, if we don't want to have
packages with only one external inside.

*** Single externals are easy to install, libs are not ***

Libs require the user to add them to their pd-path. I'd prefer it, if
a user will be made aware of this, maybe at installation or in the
package README. So votes++ for a pd-extlibs package.

These thoughts are a bit chaotic, but might be valid for a deeper
discussion.

ciao
-- 
 Frank Barknecht                               _ ______footils.org__