[postgis-devel] liblwgeom.so

[Chris Hodgson]

Yah I suppose I'd have to agree with Paul's logic. Perhaps the right 
approach would be to fork a liblwgeom (perhaps give it a new name) and 
maintain it as a separate project as a library in its own right. If it 
is successful then perhaps one day PostGIS would link to it. If it is 
not, then at least the PostGIS project isn't spending resources on goals 
that are really outside of our main direction.

If there isn't enough motivation (monetary or otherwise) to make 
liblwgeom succeed as separate project, then there certainly isn't enough 
to have it succeed as a separate library within PostGIS and ALSO keep up 
with the necessary changes to follow it in PostGIS.

Chris

Paul Ramsey wrote:
> So, back in mid-month, strk asked:
>
> "Do you agree on having liblwgeom installed systemwide and dynamically
> linked starting with PostGIS 2.0 ?"
>
> And there followed, oddly enough, a lot of discussion about the
> mechanics of doing it and no discussion at all about the wisdom of
> doing it. I would like to backtrack a little and talk about why it
> gives me a case of the heebie jeebies.
>
> * Our build is already getting complexer and complexer, and this adds
> more complexity, and another autotool to our world.
> * Breaking our install into components (this library here, these tools
> that depend on it there) adds to the number of places an install can
> fail (ha ha! you can't find the library! (note how many times this
> happens to us already with libgeos!)) even though in theory this stuff
> always "just works"
> * We are a PgSQL extension, not a third-party library. If this
> actually "succeeds" in getting people using liblwgeom, it also "fails"
> in that now we have to, in addition to doing our own work as PostGIS
> developers, ensure we don't break other people's work. If we do change
> things all the time and people don't use us, then we don't "succeed",
> so the "let other people use liblwgeom" argument fails.
>
> I feel like there are non-trivial negatives to this plan and no
> strongly articulated positives.
>
> If I were asked to vote on it, I'd be -0. There are lots of things I
> hate about the code base now, I can hate one more, if everyone else
> thinks it's a dandy idea I won't veto, I have no monopoly on the
> truth, but I'd like us to actually poll the group and hear who *does*
> think it's a dandy idea and why.
>
> P.
> _______________________________________________
> postgis-devel mailing list
> postgis-devel at postgis.refractions.net
> http://postgis.refractions.net/mailman/listinfo/postgis-devel
>