[GRASS-dev] GRASS 6.3.0 release preparation

[Michael Barton]

On 8/12/07 9:36 AM, "Glynn Clements" <glynn at gclements.plus.com> wrote:

>>> 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.

Thanks. I understand what you are getting at. I guess I'm accustomed to
getting such software from the original distributor. E.g., Apple provides
Python 2.3 with it's Mac distribution, but I've installed 2.5 directly from
python.org.

> 
> 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.

I forget that many Linux users are accustomed to getting software from their
distro repository.

> 
> 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.

Good points. I remember some directions at the wxPython download site for
installing wxPython in non-standard locales and installing multiple
versions. Maybe we could use those suggestions to deal with this.

Michael


__________________________________________
Michael Barton, Professor of Anthropology
Director of Graduate Studies
School of Human Evolution & Social Change
Center for Social Dynamics & Complexity
Arizona State University

phone: 480-965-6213
fax: 480-965-7671
www: http://www.public.asu.edu/~cmbarton