Re: gs shouldn't depend on svgalib

[joost@rulcmc.leidenuniv.nl (joost witteveen)]

> 
> The gs package is compiled to use svgalib and X. This is a nuisance, I
> had to install svgalib only for gs. I propose to split it in one for
> svgalib only and another for X only.
> 
> Carlos
> 
I'm sorry, but this is the way it has been decided to do it for all
packages that could use more libs: simply make them decide on all
libs. This makes installation much easier, while not adding too much
disk space. Splitting gs in two would create 4 .deb files (2 for
gs-2.62, 2 for gs-3.53). I'd rather answer about 2 emails/half year
about gs depending on both svgalib and X than having to explain what
4 gs packages is good for.

Apart from that, it would be better do use ELF dynamic loading for
this purpose: that way you can have one executable, that decides at
run-time what libraries to use. But this uses up quite a lot
of maintainers-time.

Oh, and appart from that:

rulcmc:/usr/bin$ du gs-papersize 
1067    gs-papersize
rulcmc:/usr/bin$ du /usr/lib/libvga*
224     /usr/lib/libvga.a
0       /usr/lib/libvga.config
0       /usr/lib/libvga.et4000
0       /usr/lib/libvga.so
0       /usr/lib/libvga.so.1
152     /usr/lib/libvga.so.1.2.8
57      /usr/lib/libvgagl.a
0       /usr/lib/libvgagl.so
0       /usr/lib/libvgagl.so.1
47      /usr/lib/libvgagl.so.1.2.8

So, adding an EXTRA gs-binary (if you want to install two binaries) will
ADD very much disk usage, for the gain of only very little if you
don't want svga.


-- 
joost witteveen
            joost@rulcmc.leidenuniv.nl
          joostje@debian.org
--
Use Debian Linux!