[Bug 518949] Review Request: brlcad - computer aided solid modelling and design

[bugzilla at redhat.com]

Please do not reply directly to this email. All additional
comments should be made in the comments box of this bug.


https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=518949


Christopher Sean Morrison <brlcad at mac.com> changed:

           What    |Removed                     |Added
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
                 CC|                            |brlcad at mac.com




--- Comment #11 from Christopher Sean Morrison <brlcad at mac.com>  2009-10-06 16:33:16 EDT ---
We wish we didn't have to do that kind of thing too.  Alas, there is not a
universal cross-platform package management system that we can rely on to be
default installed cross-platform.  With the exception of openNURBS and NIST
SCL, our external dependencies are unmodified and primarily provided as a
download convenience for users.

Our build aims hard to "just work" by default, regardless of platform and
environment.  We go to great lengths in our build system to perform compilation
testing to detect installed libraries and to use them when we can. 
Additionally, there are compilation options to force all or individual
dependencies on and off so that package management systems can be sure they're
getting a system-installed library.  The default is merely "auto-detect".

I'm really not sure what Matt meant by not following standard naming schemes.
Is there even such a thing?   The problem has been simple naming conflicts as
our core public libraries are sub-projects in themselves with trade mark
identity.  The solution there is to install our libraries in a sub-directory
(e.g., /usr/lib/brlcad/librt.so) and update the system linker search paths so
the conflict is avoided.

To get more specific on our external dependencies and respond to Toshio's
request .. here's the list of installable dependencies their status:

tkhtml3: no source changes, build convenience
tkImg: no source changes, build convenience
Utah Raster Toolkit: no upstream, we apply security and build fixes (but
otherwise do not modify)
TNT: no source changes (it's only header files)
openNURBS: some source mods, upstream is not interested (competes with their
business) 
NIST SCL: no upstream, heavily modified (we'll eventually manage it as a
sub-project)

We're using openNURBS in a way that upstream specifically doesn't support. 
It's a fantastic library that provides (a) geometric representation and (b)
conversion facilities, yet is a subset of their larger commercial Rhino SDK
which includes (c) geometric analysis facilities.  We need a, b, and c for the
same reasons they did, so we have to implement a portion of what they
intentionally remove.  We're looking into ways to refactor our modifications so
they are an independent superset (so upstream is unmodified), but that's not
where things are at today.

Big thanks and appreciation to Matt Chan for taking this up.  Thanks to
everyone else for taking the time to review and critique.  It will be great to
see BRL-CAD integrated.

Cheers!
Sean

-- 
Configure bugmail: https://bugzilla.redhat.com/userprefs.cgi?tab=email
------- You are receiving this mail because: -------
You are on the CC list for the bug.