How to announce new optional dependencies? [was: What KDE would like distributions to do]

[Fabian K.]

Regarding

> * we need to mark the optional, but in truth required dependencies

For those dependencies, would it be an option to replace

find_package(AwesomeLinuxOnlyLib)

with

option(UseAwesomeLib "Don't touch if you're a Linux distro" ON)

if(UseAwesomeLib)

find_package(AwesomeLinuxOnlyLib REQUIRED)

endif()


With that, one would get a build error with the default configuration if
the

dependency is not met, and non-Linux distributions could still disable it
by

passing -DUseAwesomeLib=OFF to cmake.

This would cause slightly more work for non-Linux distributions, but I'd
wager

that this is not a huge obstacle.


Of course, documenting new dependencies (via XML or whatever else) would be
welcome and would avoid the initial build error.


Fabian



2016-03-21 12:59 GMT+01:00 Martin Graesslin <mgraesslin at kde.org>:

> > > because of non-linux platforms
> > >
> > >     - We expect Linux distributions to fulfill them
> >
> > Then new dependencies should be communicated in advance, or when the
> > tarballs are made ready for a new (beta) release. Sometimes it's
> guesswork,
> > or checking the CMake output, which is not ideal with automated build
> > systems.
>
> How do you suggest this to work? The last time I run into the situation
> that I
> needed to add an optional dependency and tell distros about it, it failed
> horribly. Almost no distro got the memo :-( In retrospection I think I
> sent it
> out too early: when the dependency was added, not when we released. On the
> other hand it needs to be sent out as soon as possible for constantly
> integrating distros.
>
> My best ideas currently are:
> * we need better output from CMake (more structured storage of feature
> info ->
> xml?)
> * we need to mark the optional, but in truth required dependencies
> * we give up on the idea of making things optional and turn everything as
> mandatory and open up for the big systemd bikeshedding discussions ;-)
>
> Cheers
> Martin
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