[Qgis-developer] geos c api note

[Jürgen E. Fischer]

Hi Martin,

On Sun, 17. Aug 2008 at 21:20:12 +0530, Martin Dobias wrote:
> Well, very recent library versions cause problems mostly for linux
> users which usually use packages from distros and manual installation
> of the libs discourages quite a lot

IMHO the change we need isn't that important, it's probably just a
sanity check and AFAIK there are other sanity checks missing.

QGIS compiles fine with current GEOS.

And we need to produce packages for all distributions anyway - is there 
a distribution that carries own qgis packages?  That could include GEOS.

As it's just one more GEOS call, that probably won't break anything.

Not ideal, but just a temporary workaround.

 
> > > - may bring new bugs
> > That's true for almost every change.
> Yes, so why to do this work just before the release?

Because I wanted to package for OSGeo4W and use the dependencies there.
They only ship the C-API.   Maybe bad timing, but IMHO a move in the
right direction.


> You're right. I'm aware of the issues. On windows we have to build
> many deps by ourselves so building also geos is not such a problem.
> The thing about c++ api not being recommended is really something that
> we should avoid in long term. But doing it now just kills the
> development effort I (and others) would like to give to enhance qgis.

Hm, so we don't switch to the C-API while we still can with just little
effort, but instead plan to introduce more and more dependencies to the
C++-API, which we know we won't use in the long term and which makes the
switch require more effort?

Unless the C-API, which currently hides the different geometry classes
in GEOS, is changed heavily, which I doubt will happen, inheriting from
GEOS classes is IMHO a bad move.


> > So I think we should target the C-API and extend it if necessary in
> > cooperation with the geos folks.
 
> Indeed. However I would prefer the cooperation in way that first we
> list what we need, they make the necessary changes and then we can
> switch to C api.

Why not work more closely with the GEOS folks and do the changes
incrementally?


Jürgen

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