debian and Pd-extended WAS Re: [PD] libjack problems

[geiger]

On Fri, 23 Jun 2006, Hans-Christoph Steiner wrote:
> The Pd-extended build system should be able to handle this right
> now.  Each section is easily buildable on its own by doing: make
> ggee, make zexy, make pdp, make iemlib, etc.  And it is quite easy to
> redirect the install location of make pdp_install, make zexy_install,
> etc.

Yes, but still I have to do prepare a package each time something went
wrong. And there are more things that can go wrong than one generally
thinks.

> > I also like to have the possibility to only install pd, and not
> > hundreds of externals which I won't use, and which I think noone
> > should
> > use and which just use up disk space.
>
> There is undoubtedly a lot of cruft.  Part of what I think we should
> do with Pd-extended is to make a standard way of deprecating cruft.
> But that takes a lot of work.  So in the meantime, Pd-extended ships
> with a lot of cruft.
>
> The way Pd-extended is now is by no means a finished product, its
> just one of the stepping stones to a Pd platform.  I think its time
> to stop wasting time making separate build systems and distros for
> each platform.  The amount of time that people have wasted on issues
> due to the separate distros is massive.  The amount of time people
> have to wait because the package is 25 megs bigger than it should be
> is not very big.  We can then put that effort into going forward on
> all platforms.

Sorry, I just do not agree. Most of the things can be done with Pd
builtin objects. If we would not try to maintain useless stuff we would
save even more time. If people wouldn't have to try several externals
and versions before finding the right object to do their things they
would save time.

<snip>
>
> Once we have the automatic nightly builds setup, that should catch a
> lot of problems.  Moving it to Debian proper shouldn't be a big deal
> then.

It might not be a big deal, but it is work, and there are quality checks
in Debian that are not that easy to surpass. Being able to build is only
one step. We might be lucky, but I do not think that the Debian people
share your opinion about quality, so I am in for trouble, and it will be
hard for me to justify the size of the package, especially if I am not
convinced myself.

Then, there is also the possiblity to maintain packages outside of Debian,
which might be easier.

Günter