[GRASS-dev] GRASS 6.3.0 release preparation

[Glynn Clements]

Michael Barton wrote:

> >> I realize that getting wxPython 2.8 on some systems is currently a problem,
> >> but this can be helped a lot by the release of wxPython packages for
> >> different Linux systems within the GRASS community (Mac and Windows binaries
> >> seem to be released along with any new wxPython version change). The recent
> >> prep of a Mandriva RPM by (sorry I can't remember) is a good example. Also,
> >> we never took advantage of the packaging features of TclTk, but could do so
> >> for a wxPython GUI to make this easier.
> > 
> > Even if we provide .rpm/.deb/etc files for every OS in existence, many
> > people may be unwilling to use a third-party package which might
> > conceivably conflict with the "vendor" version.
> 
> Sorry, but I don't understand your point here. How is providing a binary
> that is not available from the wxPython site in conflict with the 'vendor'
> version? This is just a convenience to make it easier for someone to install
> the software. They can always compile from source if they want a custom
> version.

If the user already has e.g. wxPython 2.6 installed as part of the OS
distribution, they may be reluctant to install any other version of
wxPython.

Not only do we need to ensure that a wxPython 2.8 package doesn't
interfere with their existing installation in any way, but we also
need to convince the user of that fact.

We also need to ensure that the wxPython 2.8 package *does* get used
by GRASS even though it doesn't get used by anything else which uses
wxPython.

Here, I set LD_LIBRARY_PATH and PYTHONPATH manually before running
wxgrass. I'm not sure how easy it would be for GRASS to automate that,
given that wxPython 2.8 is likely to be installed in such a way that
it would normally be "invisible" to packages which use wxPython.

-- 
Glynn Clements <glynn at gclements.plus.com>