dolfin team mailing list archive

[Joachim Berdal Haga <jobh@xxxxxxxxx>]

Right! I'll make it optional, probably with some functionality missing
without QT.

-j.

On 29 August 2012 17:48, Anders Logg <logg@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> 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