Packaging OSLib

[alan buckley]

>Tony van der Hoff <tony at vanderhoff.org> wrote:
>"alan buckley" <alan_baa at hotmail.com> wrote in message
[snip]
> > There are probably better people than me to give the general benefits of
> > a package manager. You may want to look at the RISC OS Packaging site
> > http://www.riscpkg.org/.

>Yes, I'm aware of the project. A neat idea, but a solution looking for a
>problem IMHO. It doesn't appear to have got widespread support, porbably 
>for
>the same reasons is I'm giving.

You are correct, it doesn't seem to have got widespread support. It just
seemed like such a good idea for the reasons shown on the project page.
Personally I think it does solve a problem, but with the small amount of
software on RISC OS and the ease of installing software anyway, it just
isn't as necessary as on other platforms.

>As Dave has pointed out, but you seem to
>have failed to understand, OSLib is not the sort of thing that needs to be
>present to support an application; it is linked in by the application
>developer, and it is he who will decide to fetch a new version of the
>library, if he so wishes.

Sorry to argue about this one, but I understood exactly what Dave meant,
which is why I tried to reword my question. Just to be clear I was talking
about packaging the library for use by developers to make it easier for
them to fetch the library. It has nothing to do with any programs that
are built with it.

>There is no runtime "dependency" as such on OSLib.
Yes and unless I have been particularly unclear I never said there was.

>Your point about re building from source is valid, but thre seem to be few,
>if any, applications released in source form.

This is sad, but true. However the idea was to support the few that are.

>
>I'm assuming that the package builder requires a working RISC OS machine;
>something that is for me, at least, increasingly difficult. (OSLib itself
>now builds under Linux).

It should be possible to create a package on another machine as it just
uses zip files and text control records. However it isn't set up that way
at the moment. So I understand your point.

>
>I was actually soliciting opinion as to the likely benefits to the OSLib
>project. OSLib *is* available from a single source. Updates are few
>nowadays. Given the lack of innovation on the OS from both the main RISC OS
>developers, I can't see that changing much.

The only real benefit for the OSLib project is that it would give another
distribution channel. It's real benefit would be if developers were using
the packaging project to get their libraries.

>
>My personal feeling is that the current arrangements work well enough, but 
>I
>would welcome anyone volunteering to build packages from the freely
>available OSLib project. If you subscribe to the oslib-commits mail list,
>you'd automatically be kept informed of any updates.

You are correct of course, the current arrangements do work well enough.
The idea of packaging OSLib was to add something, rather than
take away from anything that is already there.

As I think it is a good idea I would quite like to try to package OSLib if
you have no objections. However to do a good job I need to be able
to build it from the source on RISC OS. From the documentation it
appears to be possible only if you have Acorn/Castle C/C++. Am I
correct in this assumption?

I hope I haven't wasted too much of your time. It really was supposed
to be a quick enquiry.

Regards,
Alan