Motif and Lesstif
Brian C. White writes:
>
> > I was wondering, do mesa and mesa related packages really require
> > lesstiff to run? Can somebody with real Motif run them as well? If
> > Lesstif is not specifically required, then perhaps the dependency
> > could be changed to a recommendation, allow those of us with Motif to
> > not get a hassle from dpkg?
>
> It would probably be best if "lesstif" provided the virtual-package "motif"
> that other packages can depend upon. You would then just have to install
> a dummy "motif" package on your system.
I'm not clear what problem this solves. It seems to me that users with
real Motif need the dummy motif package to tell dpkg not to install
lesstif or lesstif-dependent packages. Furthermore, I think packages
compiled to use lesstif libraries need to be recompiled in order to use
the Motif libraries. So the virtual-package approach isn't going to work.
Where does this put developers? We can build packages which use lesstif,
but these can't be used by folks with Motif. Not all developers have
Motif and those who do may not want to support both motif and lesstif
versions of their packages (assuming Motif and Lesstif can exist on the
same system).
Try this: Packages which depend on the Motif or Lesstif shared libraries
should also be available as packages with the respective static libraries
linked in. Now everyone has some version of a package that can run on
their system without conflicts. We should also encourage developers to
use lesstif over Motif when they can -- the number of users with the shared
lesstif libraries being greater than the number with Motif, who can still
use the staticly-linked versions.
--
Karl Sackett krs@caos.aamu.edu
Run silent, run deep
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