enabling/disabling features (Was Re: RE Questions with Auke Kok)

[Couannette]

watryac04 at uww.edu wrote :

So if you have GTK installed, you'd still be able to compile
mozilla without GTK support?

Yes.

jasper at lunar-linux.org wrote :

If you say yes to an optional depends you'd want to use it, right? If
you don't want to use it, you say no ... Lin doesn't uninstall modules
if you say no to an optional depends.

Yes, but : configure script will detect software installed watever
"optional_depends" answer you make....
There are two different things.

Moritz Heiber wrote:

>I don't get you here. I'm using the original ALSA driver along with the
>OSS emulation provided by that driver. Therefore I need to have the ALSA
>packages installed and no kernel drivers.
>
>Moreover Jasper is right: If an app explitcitly requieres ALSA it
>definitly needs it to compile.
>
>  
>
If you use ALSA driver with OSS emulation you don't need ALSA libs.
Therefore, if I want to build apps with little library footprint I want
do disable ALSA support in configuration stage. Not in lin deps.

The main reason for building apps with little (minimal) library binds is
that UNIX/Linux systems tend to be more and more complex. And complexity
leads to headaches when something goes wrong. A more complex system is
more subject to failure than a simple one. Take a look at rescent major
anoyment in Linux software :

- freetype / XFree / fontconfig / pango / ghostscript and friends ...
- gdk / imlib / gtk / gnome libs (ui & all) and all gnome2 stuff ...
- gettext / glibc ...

Beware : I don't want everything to be choosen in lin stage. It would be
more difficult to use lunar. A common set of dependencies could be
defined (at the moment : it's implemented in "depends and
optional_depends" system), and a complete list of depends could be
accessible to tune special module &/or tree of modules (hierarchy of
modules that provides a system like gnome/kde/xfce/...).

Example of incompatibilities :

transcode won't compile with latest libdv. And this one is needed by
kino or dv apps. Thus I have to lrm libdv to build transcode. Upon lunar
update all things get weird and broken ...

MPlayer won't compile with latest libdvdnav...

Well. How could we create this matrix ? Do each configure provides a
clean interface for custom selection of dependencies ?

Strength & Honor Lunar !

Couannette