[mapserver-dev] Design/Re-Design consideration

[Pericles S. Nacionales]

Seems like a good idea...  I think GDAL/OGR already has a module plugin 
interface but GRASS is the only available module currently.  Maybe 
that's a route that could be looked into if GDAL/OGR is to go this route.

I have to say though, if you're compiling the library yourself, you can 
compile with a minimal library support (just TIFF, JPEG, and Shapefiles, 
for example).

-Perry

Stephen Woodbridge wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> I really like gdal and ogr. I can't say I use them all the time, but 
> they work and do the job when I need them and I would be lost without 
> them on some jobs. So Thanks and keep up the good work.
>
> I want to toss out an idea that I think would make gdal/ogr better. 
> This comes from my frustration with the fact that as more formats are 
> supported, the more system library dependencies that are required to 
> install it. I was horrified when I went to build mapserver with wfs 
> support and I only use shapefiles on postgis layers that I had to 
> install gdal and that pulled in some 20-30 other system packages!!!!
>
> This is insane from my perspective. I don't need any of those packages 
> for the work I'm doing, maybe mapserver should not require gdal for 
> wfs, but I'm sure there is a good reason for that choice.
>
> Regardless, The idea that I want to offer is that I think it would be 
> very cool from a packaging point of view if gdal/ogr could take a page 
> from the PHP book and configure a directory of runtime loadable 
> modules. There would be a base package and then each format or group 
> of formats would be loaded at runtime if it existed in the modules 
> directory. In your ./configure script you could select what optional 
> modules you want to build like --with-mod=all or --with-mod=gtif or 
> these might be automatically figured out from the libraries installed 
> or requested.
>
> Then packaging would be based on the base package and and any optional 
> format packages you want to install and each format package would have 
> its own library dependencies. This would greatly simplify the growing 
> tangle of system library and packaging dependencies and make things 
> more modular from the users perspective.
>
> Its an idea, maybe not well thought out, it probably involves a lot of 
> work on someones part. It is offered in the hopes of making gdal/ogr 
> better and more accessible from users and sysadmin's perspective.
>
> Discuss amongst yourselves.
>
> Thanks,
>   -Steve W
>
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