[PD] libjack problems

[Hans-Christoph Steiner]

On Jun 22, 2006, at 11:47 PM, geiger wrote:

>
> On Thu, 22 Jun 2006, Hans-Christoph Steiner wrote:
>> Even  better would be to have OS-specific packages based on Pd-
>> extended, including Debian, RedHat, etc.
>
> It depends. I am scared of trying to do that, because it seems to me
> to be a maintainance nightmare. I also think that there is too much
> duplicated functionality in pd-extended, which makes it bloated.
>
> I see the usefulness of pd extended for the user, but as a developer
> I just can't invest my spare time into something that I think is not
> a good thing. Most of the externals in pd-extended are for beginners,
> when people do not know how to solve a problem in pd, they just look
> if an external for solving their problem exists.
>
> The idea of the CVS was not to throw everything in a pot and cook it,
> but to extract the useful parts and combine efforts.
>
> Anyhow, I have said that several times already, and please don't  
> get me
> wrong, I think pd-extended is great for the user and for being able to
> quickly install everything that is around, but I just can not  
> invest my
> time on working on something where I constantly have to fix things  
> that
> I think that shouldn't be there in the first place.
>
> Official Debian/Ubuntu packages of pd-extended are very unlickely to
> come from my side.

I definitely don't have an interest in fixing things that are not  
useful.  That is certainly not the aim of Pd-extended.  So much stuff  
is included because a) there is a ton of good code available for Pd,  
and b) people use this stuff.  Before, if someone posted a patch  
where they used some non-standard externals, it was always a major  
chore for other to set up the externals so that patch worked.  If  
everyone is on the same install, that problem goes away.

Yes, its a big package, and yes there is a lot of crap that is  
included.  But these days, hard drive space is far cheaper and more  
abundant than Pd developer time.  So it doesn't really seem  
worthwhile to spend much time removing cruft if it doesn't get in the  
way, and its safely tucked away in a libdir, where it can't do any  
harm to people unless they try to use it.

Another thing about a common build system is that a lot of the  
maintenance and debugged is then shared across platforms.  This saves  
a lot of labor.   I think that the debian packages would be less  
maintenance if their build system was pooled with Pd-extended,  
especially if you include pdp and pidip and others that aren't  
currently part of the "official" debian packages.

If someone else did the work, would you be willing to accept it as  
the standard Debian packages?

.hc


------------------------------------------------------------------------

Man has survived hitherto because he was too ignorant to know how to  
realize his wishes.  Now that he can realize them, he must either  
change them, or perish.    -William Carlos Williams