Why is lastfm a required dependency?

[Andreas Pakulat]

On 22.06.09 16:08:38, Leo Franchi wrote:
> It previously integrated (as last.fm has always been a part of  
> amarok) because we couldn't depend on an external library (it didn't  
> exist), so in-source was the only way to go. When I switched over to  
> making us use the new liblastfm, I made it required just in order to  
> keep things as they were. There wasn't a big debate over what to do.  
> So, now is a good time for that :)
> 
> Pros:
> 	-> Provides scrobbling, which has always been built-in and users  
> might expect to be there.
>          -> Provides Dynamic Playlists bias, last.fm service, and (in  
> the near future) info in the CV.
> 
> Cons:
> 	-> With the service architecture, making it be a plugin is trivial,  
> and users who definitely don't want anything to do with last.fm don't  
> have to.
>   	-> Packagers not enabling it would royally suck, and needlessly  
> remove Amarok functionality.
> 
> thoughts?

Personally I don't use anything it might bring to me, but I (currently and
most probably only temporarily) have to build liblastfm myself which is a
pita.

I don't think you'll need to worry too much about packagers disabling
things, my experience with packages from KDE apps so far is that usually
they have enabled every little possible feature that exists :) Especially
with the feature-logging that cmake provides its hard to overlook optional,
missing dependencies which disable certain features.

So my vote as a user goes for making it optional.
 
-- 
Future looks spotty.  You will spill soup in late evening.