[PD-dev] Re: Pd for Debian [was: Re: [PD] Pd-0.38.4-extended-RC6 release]

[Frank Barknecht]

Hallo,
Hans-Christoph Steiner hat gesagt: // Hans-Christoph Steiner wrote:

> The dependencies argument is a valid one, but that will be a lot of  
> work to setup and maintain, it seems to me.  Are you then going to have  
> to make pd-ogg, pd-mp3, pd-speex, pd-libsndfile, etc?

I don't think it has to be such a black and white picture drawn just
by technical demands. I'm actually in favour of a more use-oriented
approach and I would draw the line between video/gfx and audio/midi.
Pd itself is useless without basic audio or midi support. So the audio
users would form the base user group. These people probably will have
libsndfile or libogg installed anyways. 

Additionally there are gfx-oriented externals, which require audio
stuff anyway, because of their dependency on Pd, but they also require
stuff like video codecs, which is of no use on a purely audio system. 

I'm deliberately simplifiying here, of course, as e.g. Gridflow is
much more than just a video external. 

A user who wants to have everything can just install every pd-related
package, which could be made even easier in Debian by providing a
dummy package, e.g. pd-complete, that is empty itself, but depends on
all pd-related packages.

So what I'm thinking of is just a handful of packages:

* pd
* pd-externals (including flext?)
* pd-gfx (Gem and pdp, maybe Gridflow)
* pd-doc (additional documentation, tutorials etc.)
* pd-abstractions (this could also be merged with pd-externals)
* And maybe language-specific packages like pd-python, pd-ruby, pd-snd/-scheme. 

(I don't want to deinstall the whole Pd, just because there's a new
python version coming...)

IMO this kind of setup has advantages over the one-size-fits-all
package both for users and maintainers. 

Ciao
-- 
 Frank Barknecht                 _ ______footils.org_ __goto10.org__