[mapserver-dev] AGG dependency

[Howard Butler]

I am also generally supportive of this because of the user and  
maintenance headaches, but I would caution that a concern of mine is  
the MapScript side of the fence.  For example, matplotlib is a Python  
library that uses AGG underneath.  When we had GD in the mix, a  
problem was our clashing with PHP's internal GD.  Since AGG is fancy C+ 
+ :), I'm wondering if it would be possible to put our fork of the AGG  
under a namespace to prevent symbol clashes.


On Apr 24, 2009, at 8:53 AM, Yewondwossen Assefa wrote:

> For windows build, we have a mscv makefile which I believe is not  
> part of the agg project. We are using it as part of the ms4w/osgeo4w  
> build process. If we go ahead with this, I can commit that makefile.
> Overall, I don't see any problems for people building on windows so  
> I am  +1
>
> Assefa
>
> Thomas Bonfort wrote:
>> Devs,
>> I foresee this might by stirring a can of worms given the precedent
>> with the GD library, but I would like to propose that we stop relying
>> on an external agg library, and pull in our own subset of agg in the
>> mapserver source tree:
>> * most of the agg code is templated, which means that the agg  
>> external
>> library actually only contains a tiny subset of what we're using
>> anyways.
>> * building agg is a pain for our users (Makefile needs to be patched
>> (adding -fPIC and building a shared library), and some distro's
>> package are just plain broken (rhel notably). This is my primary
>> motivation for the modification.
>> * the design intent of the library was to be directly included in
>> project trees rather than being built as a library
>> * the agg project is to the least not very lively. It has been taken
>> over by the community, but for the time being this has limited itself
>> to having a large list of commiters but no actual coding going on. As
>> such I do not see it evolving in a near future.
>> * there would be no change in the mapserver code, only Makefile  
>> modifications.
>> If we decide to go down this route, I volunteer to maintain the
>> imported code and the corresponding Makefiles.
>> so:
>> - can the mapscript maintainers speak up if this can be disruptive ?
>> - bring on the flames :)
>> best regards,
>> thomas
>
>
> -- 
> ----------------------------------------------------------------
> Assefa Yewondwossen
> Software Analyst
>
> Email: assefa at dmsolutions.ca
> http://www.dmsolutions.ca/
>
> Phone: (613) 565-5056 (ext 14)
> Fax:   (613) 565-0925
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