[GRASS5] GRASS extension manager proposal

[Roger Bivand]

On Thu, 16 Dec 2004, Hamish wrote:

> > as I am making good progress porting my belief modelling tools
> > to 5.7,
> 
> great

Do you (Benjamin) have any reports beyond the useful comments you've 
already given about interface writing using the 5.7 API?

> 
> 
> > What do you think?
> 
> why bother with g.install and just put it all in GRASS CVS?
> 

Because, as Benjamin and others (especially Paolo Cavallini) have
suggested, a development model with add-in modules is vastly more robust
that one in which everything is in the same tarball. Central servicies
need to be in the core distribution, but everything else should be
modularised. They can be stored on a central CVS repository, but do not
need to be in the same project, just to follow the same installation
rules. 

In particular, it isn't obvious that the original choices made in GRASS to
carry around large amounts of model interface, and also unmaintained model
code, were sensible. If the models are maintained standalone anyway, the
interface can be built and installed by people who need the functionality
and have both GRASS and the model.

How to do a clean g.install isn't so clear, though - exposing the 
dependencies of the local GRASS installation, its headers and libraries, 
and to do it portably across OSX, Unix/Linux, and Cygwin. A lot of the R 
CMD * family are stubs, scripts, and Perl programs, and that feels 
flexible and robust. 

Roger

> 
> 
> Hamish
> 
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-- 
Roger Bivand
Economic Geography Section, Department of Economics, Norwegian School of
Economics and Business Administration, Breiviksveien 40, N-5045 Bergen,
Norway. voice: +47 55 95 93 55; fax +47 55 95 93 93
e-mail: Roger.Bivand at nhh.no