dolfin team mailing list archive

[Anders Logg <logg@xxxxxxxxx>]

On Wed, Aug 29, 2012 at 09:52:51AM -0500, Andy Ray Terrel wrote:
> On Wed, Aug 29, 2012 at 4:55 AM, Garth N. Wells <gnw20@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> > 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
>
> Piping in from a guy who builds too much code on supercomputers, I
> would suggest not making QT a hard dependency.  It is a pretty intense
> build and takes lots of space.  We only support it on a few of our
> machines but all our machines support VTK.
>
> Although Joachim is right about the event loop.  QT is the best gui
> interface out there, but perhaps it should be more of an optional
> dependency.

ok. My assumption here was that plotting was mostly interesting on
desktop machines (not compute servers) and QT is easily available on
desktops.

But perhaps a bigger problem is packaging for Mac and Windows which
would require bundling QT.

--
Anders