[PD] deken-plugin & portability

[Chris McCormick]

Hello,

Warning, 100% vapourware ahead.

On 14/10/15 23:22, rolfm at dds.nl wrote:
> it looks like the future of pd-extended is going to be 'deken'.
> what to do then about portability?

I think we should copy the good existing solutions for this from popular 
scripting languages.

For example, in Python you can supply a file "requirements.txt" with 
your Python code, and an end-user can issue `pip install -r 
requirements.txt` to install all of the packages with the correct 
versions listed therein:

https://pip.readthedocs.org/en/1.1/requirements.html

There should be a thing in Pd/deken that works exactly like this. For 
example, you could have a [deps] object which specifies the name of a 
text file that contains the list of dependencies and their versions. The 
user could bang the [deps] object (or be prompted when it loads, or some 
other user-friendly mechanism) to load up the deken interface and 
initiate the install of those dependencies one-by-one.

Before anybody wigs out about security, obviously we should make sure 
the GPG signatures of all of those binary packages are checked and 
verified, as well as using HTTPS for all connections, and the user 
should be prompted before taking any action that might compromise their 
security, and informed of all of the risks [which is much more than 
Python's `pip` does currently]. Just as much as anybody else I don't 
want the NSA stealing my proprietary procedural rave algorithms[1] and 
using them to subdue a band of deeply attractive Russian spies causing 
them to dance uncontrollably to the frankly irresistible rhythms of acid 
bass + garage beats thereby forcing the west's neo-libertarian 
centralized fiat capitalist imperial practices upon the free world[2]. 
Fuck that!

IOhannes and I have some draft code and GitHub tickets (search 
"dekenception" on the GitHub) pointing in this general direction but 
there is a lot of work to be done. Patches are very much welcome!

Given the above does not exist, if the current deken functionality does 
not work for your users I would suggest they use Pd-extended, or 
Pd-l2ork if it is available for their platform [I have not tried the 
latter but I think Jonathan indicated it should fit the bill].

Cheers,

Chris.

[1] Hypothetically proprietary - they're actually GPL.
[2] 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Does_Humor_Belong_in_Music%3F_%28album%29#/media/File:Frank_Zappa,_Does_Humor_Belong_In_Music.jpg

-- 
http://mccormick.cx/