[GRASS-dev] what dependencies does GRASS actually need to run?

[William Kyngesburye]

OSX generally uses dynamic libraries.  There are a few static  
libraries available, but frameworks are *always* dynamic.  Any  
(dynamic) libraries used from the system will always be available on  
all Mac systems of the same version, so there is no need to worry  
about those as requirements for the end user to worry about.

For OSX, everything in the General Requirements (REQUIREMENTS.html),  
except GDAL and PROJ, is available in the system (though X11 is an  
optional install for OSX).  So, you could get a basic functional CLI/ 
X11-based (no GUIs, a few missing/nonfunctional modules) GRASS with  
only GDAL and PROJ.

Many of the optional requirements are not available in the OSX system  
and others are quite old, and must be installed separately.

When you build the OSX application, you can bundle extra libraries in  
the application, so the user doesn't have to worry about downloading  
and installing them - this is what I do for my binaries, except that  
the frameworks are separate installs.  Add install commands to macosx/ 
pkg/bundle.make and use make bindist to generate a bundled application  
and installer.

On Apr 15, 2009, at 12:06 PM, Michael Barton wrote:

> Thanks Moritz,
>
> This is the kind of information I was trying to get at. Trying to  
> get a feel for what is really necessary to make an installable  
> binary on Mac and Windows.
>
> Michael
> ______________________________
> C. Michael Barton, Professor of Anthropology
> Director of Graduate Studies
> School of Human Evolution & Social Change
> Center for Social Dynamics & Complexity
> Arizona State University
> Tempe, AZ  85287-2402
> USA
>
> voice: 480-965-6262; fax: 480-965-7671
> www: http://www.public.asu.edu/~cmbarton
>
> On Apr 15, 2009, at 9:58 AM, Moritz Lennert wrote:
>
>> On 15/04/09 18:40, Michael Barton wrote:
>>> On Apr 15, 2009, at 8:40 AM, Moritz Lennert wrote:
>>>> On 15/04/09 17:13, Michael Barton wrote:
>>>>> It would be useful to know for binary installations which  
>>>>> dependencies that GRASS actually needs to *run* as a binary  
>>>>> (i.e., not dependencies needed to compile).
>>>>> AFAICT, it must have PROJ and PROJ requires GDAL (though I don't  
>>>>> think GRASS requires GDAL)
>>>>
>>>> r.*.gdal, v.*.ogr require GDAL...
>>> I thought that GRASS now compiles its own r.out.gdal and r.in.gdal  
>>> and so doesn't need GDAL for these.
>>
>> It doesn't need the GDAL binary tools (gdal_translate, etc), but it  
>> still needs the GDAL libaries which is what r.out.gdal is based on.
>>
>>> I don't know about v.*.ogr
>>
>> ditto.
>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>> Some other dependencies may be for specific I/O
>>>>> Anything else it needs just to run if is is already a compiled  
>>>>> binary?
>>>>
>>>> Well, that kind of depends on how you compile it, i.e. the  
>>>> configure statement before compilation.
>>> Even if you compile with libtif do you need to have libtif to run?  
>>> On Windows? On Mac?
>>
>> You can use libraries in a static or in a dynamic way. If you use  
>> them statically, then all of the library is compiled into your  
>> executable, making it easy to install without many dependencies,  
>> but often making it fairly big, especially since your dependencies  
>> might depend on something else and so on. And you have to do the  
>> same for all programs, even if they use the same libaries (e.g.  
>> GDAL for GRASS, QGIS, etc, etc)
>>
>> So, generally, the choice is to compile with dynamic libraries,  
>> meaning that the executable finds the relevant command in the  
>> libary binary during execution. This allows different programs to  
>> share one version of the library, which reduces size, but can lead  
>> to dependency issues, especially if you compile against a different  
>> version of the library than the one you use for running the program.
>>
>>>> AFAIK, most libraries used in GRASS (including the system  
>>>> libraries) are used as dynamic libraries, so you need those. It  
>>>> also depends on what parts of GRASS you want to use, as, for  
>>>> example, the gdal example shows. nviz has specific requirements  
>>>> and so do some other modules.
>>>>
>>>> As an example, check the required packages for the installation  
>>>> of the GRASS Debian package:
>>>>
>>>> http://packages.debian.org/lenny/grass
>>>>
>>>> Not all of these packages are actually required to run the grass  
>>>> binary, as long as you don't use all of the modules.
>>> This is what I'm asking about. What is a minimal set of  
>>> dependencies to do most things?
>>
>> Define "most things" ;-)
>>
>> You definitely will need libc, I guess proj, don't know about zlib.  
>> Don't know if you could create a working GRASS installation  
>> (working, but stripped down in its functionality) with just  
>> those... If you want some sort of output, you probably need libnpng.
>>
>> But I'll leave this to the experts. Glynn ?
>>
>> Moritz
>
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-----
William Kyngesburye <kyngchaos*at*kyngchaos*dot*com>
http://www.kyngchaos.com/

"The beast is actively interested only in now, and, as it is always  
now and always shall be, there is an eternity of time for the  
accomplishment of objects."

- the wisdom of Tarzan