[Kst] getdata library-ising

[Brisset, Nicolas]

My personal experience with using CDF files is that some distros didn't
seem to bother packaging the CDF datasource separately, and did not
necessarily include it by default either (haven't tried Fedora nor
RedHat, though !). I think the question is a good one. Something that
might be good to use is the svn:externals mechanism so that people
compiling from svn (and possibly distro packagers if we take care to
provide a copy of those sources in the official tar) have easy access to
the library.

Nicolas

> > How should we handle packaging kst once getdata is removed?
> > Should we be worried about distro package creators creating binary 
> > packages of kst lacking getdata support?  When we release 
> kst source 
> > packages, should grab the latest getdata release, throw it into the 
> > kst source tarball and have the configure script build and 
> install the 
> > "internal" version of getdata if it doesn't detect an external one?
> > Were we do that, what sort of havoc would that wreak on depedency 
> > tracking package databases?  Should we trust distro packagers to 
> > create a getdata package and have the necessary 
> dependencies for kst?  
> > If they don't, would mild poking be sufficient to get them to do so?
> 
> Speaking as the official Fedora and EPEL (RedHat Enterprise
> Linux/CentOS) kst maintainer, there is zero issue in removing 
> getdata from the kst source and putting it in an external 
> package which kst would depend on (if kst were to have 
> getdata capabilities).  As long as libgetdata is packaged in 
> a sane way (i.e. you used the auto* tools so that configure 
> can be passed things like destdir and prefix and the like so 
> distributions can put the libraries and headers where they 
> belong) it will be trivial for all distributions to include 
> libgetdata.  From what I know about Fedora packaging and from 
> what I gather hearing about packagers at other distributions, 
> it's always easy (and almost a
> pleasure) to package "sane" packages.  It's the annoying ones 
> where you have to write patches and hacks to make it install 
> things in the proper location that is annoying and 
> frustrating.  And makes you question your reasons for being a 
> packager.  
> 
> Once this change to kst/libgetdata is made, a polite poke to 
> all the kst maintainers in the various big-name distributions 
> would probably be the best thing to do.  It shouldn't be too 
> hard to find their email addresses online.  In my case, 
> merely posting to the kst mailing list will suffice.  
> 
> --
> "Hermits don't have peer pressure."
> --------------------------
> Matthew Truch
> Department of Physics and Astronomy
> University of Pennsylvania
> matt at truch.net
> http://matt.truch.net/
>