[buug] Gentoo, Bluecurve and Linux too!

[f.johan.beisser]

On Fri, 18 Oct 2002, Rob Helmer wrote:

> I'm guessing by "gnome installed" you mean the whole desktop. It's not
> like you have to compile gnome-terminal and the panel and all the
> fluff that you probably don't want, it's usually just the core libraries.

well, the libs would be fine. most gnome libs are good, decent, and easy
to use. the problem comes up when i don't want the damned panel, or
gnome-terminal (i am old school - or stupid - i use xterms..). in this
case, none of these need the gnome libs, even. they only really need
freetype and gtk (they have those in common), and that's just about it.

> Hmm.. I guess it could be made simpler. It's just adding a flag to
> "make" IIRC.

no, actually it was a bit rougher than that, sadly. i ended up having to
edit the Makefiles to avoid compiling GNOME. this is even after having
/etc/make.conf set to not build it (you wouldn't believe how much breakage
that caused, whooo wee).

> To the "broken ports" comment : it really depends on how good of a job
> the developer did on making the GNOME dependency removeable without
> breaking core features of the app I guess.

actually, i've found that most developers will let you not use the GNOME
libs. it's a bit harder to get around GTK or QT requirements.

> Sure, the maintainer has to make a choice on whether it will require
> gnome-lib ( or whatever ) by default, that's the same choice I would
> make, since there's a relatively straightforward way to disallow it.

generally, the port maintainer does what's best, and easiest for him. if
he's using KDE for everything, of course his port will depend on it.

the ports stuff has been driving me nuts for a while (why, oh why, would a
machine that doesn't have X installed on it need the GTK front end for
MTR?) but usually when i bother with it.

these days, i'm getting out of using the ports system. it needs a bunch of
cleanup and hopefully options to easily avoid building things you don't
want/need.

it's a small gripe with what's otherwise been a mostly rock solid system.
the shame is that it's slowly driving me torward OpenBSD (or, if the
installer becomes easier to deal with, NetBSD) for all my OS needs.