kicad-developers team mailing list archive

[Martijn Kuipers <martijn.kuipers@xxxxxxxxx>]

On Oct 15, 2010, at 15:50 PM, Dick Hollenbeck wrote:

> On 10/15/2010 09:26 AM, Martijn Kuipers wrote:
>> On Oct 15, 2010, at 15:04 PM, Dick Hollenbeck wrote:
>> 
>> 
>>> FYI,
>>> 
>>> Kicad does not use expat directly.  wxWidgets does.  wxWidgets includes
>>> expat in its source tree.
>>> 
>> Well wxWidgets includes wxexpat in its source tree, not exactly expat per se.
>> 
>> 
>>> So one can argue that this is a discussion for the wxWidgets build
>>> environment, and if it is built properly, then Kicad can simply use
>>> wxWidgets, which should be responsible for the libraries that it needs.
>>> 
>> I wondered about that too. In order to compile wx I use the --enable-monolithic option, but then it does not make builtin support for zlib, expat and perhaps some others (at least on OSX). Do you consider this a wxWidgets error?
>> 
>> Another option is to make a multi-lib build and make kicad responsible for taking in all libs, but that requires more cmake surgery.
>> 
>> 
>>> Maybe an equally valid solution is to submit a patch to the wxWidgets
>>> team, or to your distro team, or whatever.
>>> 
>> I just wanted Kicad to tell me beforehand (before building) that my dependencies are not in order. I don't think Kicad should tell me whom I should blaim for this.
>> 
>> 
>>> It may not be the best solution, but before I identify the best
>>> solution, I usually try and find more than one.
>>> 
>> I weighted the odds and thought that adding the expat one is reasonable, but if you prefer a multilib build then I will prepare the OR and begin the surgary. 
>> 
> 
> If I were to participate in appraising the relative merits of
> alternative solutions, I would think that anything that is OSX specific
> should be pushed back to OSX folks, anything that is wxWidgets specific
> should be pushed back to wxWidgets, or maintained as a separate patch to
> wxWidgets, etc.

Great. If this works we would not need autoconf or cmake at all, just simple makefiles.
Hmm, perhaps we should program for the real world and accepts that this is not going to happen any time soon.

> 
> If we work long enough on the cmake scripts, eventually we will not be
> able to read them.
That's why you can add comments to them too.

> But I am not participating in this.  I don't have the pain you do.  I am
> using Ubuntu Lucid, without issue.

So, as long as it works on Ubuntu Lucid it is an upstream bug?

> Even though I was instrumental in crafting the first CMake buid of Kicad
> on Windows, I haven't has windows on my machine for at least 4 years,
> and stopped using it about 9 years ago.  So I am not currently qualified
> to make the judgement. 

Neither am I. I don't use windows enough to understand all its intrigues.

> But I just suggest that weight be given to putting blame where blame
> belongs.   Pros and cons are weighed according to their importance, and
> others will have different weights.
> 
> Expat is not a fixture in Kicad.  We might decide to switch to another
> XML library in the future.

Open source has no fixtures, that is why it is open source. That doesn't mean that we should not try to get it to work on all supported platforms.

I am not even sure this is a wx problem. Should wx-config add the -lexpat flag if it uses the system-lib?
Even so, it does not now, and we can detect that and solve it now.

/Martijn


> 
> 
> Dick
> 
> 
> 
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