Re: Motif and Lesstif
On Fri, 8 Nov 1996, Karl R. Sackett wrote:
> 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.
>
So far, it seems, the discussion has assumed that lesstif=motif. In this
case less != more. Lesstif is still fairly feature free when comparied
with Motif, so they are not application interchangable.
I would point out that this means that Lesstif and Motif can both reside
on the same machine (even if there are name conflicts) if the sysadmin
puts the Motif libraries in /usr/local/lib and the Debian Lesstif
libraries went into /usr/lib. They should neither provide tif nor conflict
with each other.
Luck,
Dwarf
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