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List:       kde-devel
Subject:    Re: pkg-config, glib2 etc.
From:       Mosfet <dan.duley () verizon ! net>
Date:       2003-03-16 4:18:18
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Sure does look like it. Arts requires glib so in order to install KDE HEAD you 
need to have glib and all it's dependencies installed :/ If you don't want to 
do this you'd better not upgrade.

If KDE finds it can effectively benefit from glib I'm all for it. I don't mean 
if "this will help gnome interoperate with us better but add bloat to KDE". I 
mean if it offers functionality we really need for KDE. Thus far I do not see 
this as the case. It's just something needed by the soundserver. Making KDE 
require glib just for the soundserver is pretty insane. This isn't an 
interoperability issue - KDE and Gnome do not interoperate any better because 
Arts requires glib code. Maybe Arts itself does, but I think very few Gnome 
people are using Arts and adding dependencies to KDE because of it is just 
wrong if there is no additional benefit. 

These are my thoughts, from mosfet.org:

In other news there is some debate going on the mailing lists about ARTS, the 
KDE sound server. Some people want to make it require more libraries, even 
going so far as adding glib as a dependency for the KDE sound server. This is 
getting pretty insane for the basic sound server for KDE. It's already 
extremely bloated and should not need additional dependencies. If anything it 
needs to be stripped down, (a lot). I'd bet that 90% of the users only need 
basic sound mixing for a few KDE apps and some non-KDE multimedia players. It 
needs to be able to do things like allow sounds from two different sources, 
for example allow KDE system sounds while playing a video from a MPlayer or 
an MP3, and to do basic mixing and volume control. That's *it*. I'm not an 
expert on audio so this is only my opinion, but it seems like they built a 
really nice sophisticated audio processing library and made it the default 
sound server. This is not what is needed. It's too big and getting bigger. 
What is needed is a tiny audio multiplexer and mixer. It's not that what Arts 
provides isn't nice, but it's too much for the default sound server. I think 
users would be better served with a new, smaller server as default and moving 
most of the Arts functionality to kde-multimedia. The vast majority of users 
don't use sophisticated audio processing, they just want to be able to hear 
sounds from different sources and have the basic volume and mixing controls 
you'd see on a decent stereo.

Some readers may note that I've argued for more features that users want in my 
editorials. Doesn't this statement conflict with that? Not really. I think 
apps should have the features users want and certainly shouldn't remove 
existing features people use. Often preferences in applications don't require 
that much code, just keeping flexibility in mind when designing apps and not 
intentionally hardcoding things. I don't believe core infrastructure should 
be bloated far beyond what most people use.

On Saturday 15 March 2003 10:12 pm, Sean McGlynn wrote:
> Hello,
>
> I saw the discussions on core-devel recently about glib2 possibly being a
> requirement for aRts and, thus, KDE as a whole. I didn't actually see a
> final conclusive yes or no though. Now, I'm compiling CVS for the first
> time in many months. Arts wanted pkg-config as a requirement, so I
> downloaded and installed that. (I also noticed that pkg-config has its own
> copy of glib in the sources). Now Arts wants glib2 as well, which I don't
> have either yet. Before I proceed further, can I take it that glib2 *is*
> now a definite requirement for KDE3.2 and, also, can I expect Arts to come
> up with any more "you need this as well" messages.
>
> TIA
>
> Cheers,
> Sean

 
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