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List:       kde-devel
Subject:    Re: how to solve a dependency problem in kalzium
From:       Benoit Jacob <jacob () math ! jussieu ! fr>
Date:       2007-01-30 10:47:31
Message-ID: 20070130114205.Y7821 () cantor ! math ! jussieu ! fr
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I hit "send" too fast!

I forgot to mention that an inevitable dependency is OpenBabel, a large 
library for chemistry. Both the current Kalzium3d and libavogadro need it.

It is well packaged but of course distros don't install it by default.

So it seems to me, we _have_ to find a way to allow people to install 
openbabel at the last minute and then be able to use the kalzium 3d stuff. 
Or else, almost nobody will be able to use this feature.

What do you think on the feasibility of this, in a way that works on all 
operating systems KDE wants to support?

Any pointer to how we should do it?

Note that does not defeat the point of importing libavogadro because 
libavogadro is _not_ in the distro's repositories (too young).

Benoit

On Tue, 30 Jan 2007, Benoit Jacob wrote:

> Hi List,
>
> I need your help determining the best solution to the following dependency
> problem.
>
> Executive summary:
>
> Parts of Kalzium are being merged to an external library in order to join
> efforts with a few other Qt/KDE projects. I'm asking whether we should
> propose to the developer of this library to come develop it inside the KDE
> SVN (it's a very young project, not yet released). If yes, the question is
> where? playground and kdesupport come to mind. If no, the question is:
> should Kalzium then keep its own code in order to avoid a tough external
> dependency?
>
> Long version:
>
> The 3D Kalzium code is currently developed in-house, in libkdeedu.
>
> But since we realized that there were two or three other projects doing
> similar stuff (Qt/KDE widgets rendering molecules with OpenGL), we decided
> to join efforts. So there's a new library, "libavogadro", currently hosted
> in sourceforge, mostly developed by Donald Curtis (CC). It is based on Qt
> and reuses parts of my kalzium code, and our plan was to port kalzium to
> use it soon.
>
> This brings obvious advantages (joining efforts is always nice) but one
> major problem: Kalzium would have one more external (optional) dependency,
> on libavogadro.
>
> As libavogadro is a very young project (started in september) there
> obviously aren't distro packages yet. Moreover, as libavogadro does much
> more than what Kalzium plans to use, including it in a distro just for
> kalzium would make it larger than necessary, which is a problem for Live
> CD's.
>
> This is why we expect that most distros won't ship it by default.
>
> Our plan was then to allow people to install libavogadro at the last
> moment, so Kalzium would say "sorry, you can't use the molecule viewer
> because you don't have libavogadro, but if you install it now, you'll be
> able to use the molecular viewer without need to recompile/reinstall
> kalzium".
>
> But I discussed this with Laurent Montel and he said this would
> be difficult or impossible to do! Another issue is that libavogadro uses
> eigen, which is in kdesupport -- so there's a nasty dependency game
> here, coming back and forth into KDE's SVN.
>
> Laurent then proposed to import it in playground. Then Pino told me to
> also consider kdesupport (especially as eigen is already there).
>
> What do you think?
>
> Another issue is that libavogadro is developed together with an app,
> Avogadro. If we import the lib, shouldn't we import the app too, at the
> same location? But the problem is: isn't kdesupport only for libs?
>
> Well, as you see, I'm lost, smoke is coming out of my ears, and I need
> your help!
>
> Benoit
>
>
>
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