[GRASS-dev] libgrass+grass-gui?

[Paolo Cavallini]

Hi Hamish.
Thanks for your thoughts. I think we agree more than it may seem.

Hamish ha scritto:

> As the GUIs have developed in tandem we've added little library
> and module functions along the way when some variable needed
> to be exposed or some function deineractivated (if that word
> makes sense). Development is not completely independent,
> especially if you consder the mixed components like wxVdigit
> and wxNviz.

I think modularity is the base of happiness: keeping things as separated as possible is good. As I
mentioned, anything dubious should go to the GUI.

> Currently we have pretty much a max of 2 people working on the
> GUI at any one time. With the current release stalled primarily
> due to GUI on Windows issues it forces me to at least look at
> that code, even though I usually don't use either the GUIs or
> Windows myself. If it were separate that incentive wouldn't be
> there and the gui devels might get lonely and discouraged.

I acknowledge this problem, but on the other hand I do not think it is very good to delay the
release of stable libs because of a problem in the GUI: why not releasing the libs now, and the GUI
as soon as it will be ready?

> ? AFAIK they can and do rely on the releasebranch_6_4, which
> should be stable enough not to be sensitive to this issue.

This is not very good for packagers though.

> I worry that with a multi-tier system the lesser developed
> components would be further neglected by the other devels.

Yes, this is a risk, very much present in GRASS since ages (as we all know, there are still unported
tcltk menus, the nviz issue, etc.). However, delaying what many people see as the main strength of
GRASS, its analytical power (this is not meant to offend GUI devs, sorry) is a symmetrical risk.

> The GUI is not-scriptable so the UI parts of it can change
> quite a bit within a stable release cycle without being limited
> by the preserve-backwards compatibility rule.

Yes, I think GUI can have a different release cycle for this, as I mentioned earlier.
All the best.
-- 
Paolo Cavallini: http://www.faunalia.it/pc