Hello, As I was looking into building systems and compilation process, I have come to a conclusion that while a well-prepared SConstruct file may take care of checking for the dependencies and configuring compilation, it does not actually download them. There is also the question of compatibility between build systems (do I really have to write a builder for scons in order to execute a *shudder* autogen-make combo?). Now, while packaging takes care of that, it may fail if a required package is not in the repository (looking at you, Ubuntu: it's been a couple of years now, and still no libcluttermm package). Therefore, configure-build-install combo has to become for-each-unpackaged-dependency-configure-build-install-then-configure-build-install(program). This just freaks me out. I have no problem doing this myself, but I fear that this may drive potential users (or customers, which is doubly bad). So if I wanted to write a C++ Clutter application, I would have to either: 1) Maintain libcluttermm package myself (which I don't have the time for), or 2) Skip package repos, ship libcluttermm with my program, and then install all that in a non-standard place (/opt comes to mind), therefore rendering the local copy of libcluttermm unusable by any other program (which I don't have time for).
What the hell. Now, I know I can use the C API directly, but that's not the point of writing a C++ application, is it? If I was to write a trading-card game, using an object-oriented language seems like a reasonable choice, since trading cards are *actually a pretty good metaphor for OOP*. And besides, I think now is the time we stop using a procedural language to do OOP with (and using a jury-rig build system from the 70s to compile it). The reason why I want to use Clutter is that it's a great general-purpose 2.5D library which can be used either for boring GUI or games that don't really need to use full 3D support. However, this situation makes me question its usefulness. One of the solutions would be to write a graphical installer script using Python and GTK or Qt, which uses common packages in order to build all the uncommon dependencies straight from their repositories. It would still install that to /opt, though. This also breaks updating process, however it would greatly improve the installation experience (something that Ubuntu is going for now). What do you think about this issue? _____________________ Filip Lamparski - FB <https://www.facebook.com/filip.lamparski> - G+<https://plus.google.com/105688569486178456264/posts> _______________________________________________ gtk-app-devel-list mailing list gtk-app-devel-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/gtk-app-devel-list
