dolfin team mailing list archive

["Garth N. Wells" <gnw20@xxxxxxxxx>]

On 29 August 2012 10:36, Anders Logg <logg@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> On Wed, Aug 29, 2012 at 11:20:19AM +0200, Joachim Berdal Haga wrote:
>> On 29 August 2012 11:11, Garth N. Wells <gnw20@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>> > On 29 August 2012 09:42, Joachim Berdal Haga <jobh@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>> >> I would like to switch the window handling and event loop to QT,
>> >> because it's much more flexible and mature (stable) than VTK's. An
>> >> example of things that are hard to get working right with the VTK
>> >> window handling is to close a single plotting window.
>> >>
>> >> This will introduce a new dependency for plotting (in addition to
>> >> VTK). It will be optional, and if it's not configured then it's only
>> >> plotting that is disabled.
>> >>
>> >> Any protests?
>> >>
>> >
>> > I'd rather not have it as a dependency. I don't really want a major
>> > dependency for lightweight plotting. I think we should bear in mind
>> > that we have ParaView, MayaVi, etc for making 'real' plots, so the
>> > DOLFIN plotting should remain as simple as possible.
>>
>> I agree with keeping it simple. The reason I want to introduce it is
>> not to introduce anything complex, but to gain more robust window
>> handling / event loop. However: Opposition noted -- would option 2
>> (basic support for VTK-only) be acceptable to you?
>
> I don't see why QT would be a problem. Isn't the VTK dependency just
> as heavy?

Are you saying the 2 x 'heavy' is the same as 1 x 'heavy'?

I've just checked, and QT is a 229MB tar ball!

> Or are there systems where VTK is easily available but QT is
> not?
>

There are lots of systems where neither is available. Needing two
makes the configuration and build ever more complicated. I know
first-hand that our config and build needs work on non-Ubuntu/Debian
systems, which I'd rather have sorted out before adding big
dependencies.

Garth

> --
> Anders