Please copy gimp-print-devel on all of this.
From: Raphaël Quinet <quinet@xxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Fri, 21 Jun 2002 17:43:00 +0200
I have just tried compiling gimp-1.2.4-pre1 on Solaris, and I had some
problems because of the new dependency on gimp-print (which was part of
the GIMP package until 1.2.3).
I tried to see that from the point of view of a novice user who
does not know exactly what is provided by each package, instead of
taking the point of view of a GIMP developer who knows the history
of both packages. And at first sight, it looks like there is a
circular dependency: in order to build the GIMP, you need
libgimpprint, which is part of the gimp-print package (and you need
a version >= 4.2.0). But in order to build gimp-print, you need
the GIMP!
I suppose that one option would be to distribute libgimpprint as a
separate package, with each layered product (Gimp plugin, CUPS driver,
old-style Ghostscript driver, Ghostscript IJS driver, foomatic data
generator) as a separate package, but that's unwieldly in its own
right. As Roger noted, though, we're going to turn off the default-on
behavior for the Gimp plugin.
Sven wants us to remove the Gimp Print plugin entirely from
Gimp-print. I'm not entirely certain how much I like that idea, at
least right now, but one option might be for us to distribute that
particular piece as a layered add-on rather than as part of the core
package.
Mike Sweet has other ideas entirely about the plugin; I think that
he'd like to make it PPD-based, and the plugin wouldn't generate raw
printer output. This would have a lot of advantages overall; we could
get rid of the Postscript driver in libgimpprint (which is of no use
whatsoever except for the Gimp plugin), it would make the Gimp play a
lot better with printing systems in general, and so forth. Of course,
in that case the plugin really wouldn't be part of Gimp-print at all,
and we'd certainly remove it. He can say more about that.
At least, that's how it looks like at first sight, and unfortunately
the way to solve this problem is not explained clearly in the INSTALL
file of the GIMP. I think that two solutions are possible:
- build the GIMP first with --disable-print, install it, and then
build and install gimp-print (later, the GIMP can be upgraded with
--enable-print since libgimpprint will be found)
- build gimp-print with the option --without-gimp, install it, and
then build and install the GIMP (later, gimp-print can be upgraded
--with-gimp since the GIMP will be found)
This is a bit confusing. In fact, I am wondering if it was really a
good idea to remove the files from the GIMP distribution and to
introduce an external dependency... That's why I am posting this
question here.
I see it the other way around: the problem is that we haven't managed
to completely separate the two.
Unfortunately, even the procedure described above did not work too
well with Solaris, probably because the latest version of gimp-print
contains some Linuxisms that haven't been debugged yet (I will send a
separate bug report to the gimp-print team later). I started by
configuring gimp-print 4.3.0 with the following options:
Please do report this bug!
./configure --prefix=/Local --without-cups --without-foomatic --without-ijs --without-gimp
Then I built it and installed it. Then I tried to configure the GIMP
again, hoping that it would now recognize libgimpprint. But here is
what I got:
./configure --prefix=/Local
[...]
checking for gtkdoc-mkdb... false
checking for sendmail... /usr/lib/sendmail
checking for gimpprint-config... /Local/bin/gimpprint-config
checking for gimpprint >= 4.2.0... /Local/bin/gimpprint-config: syntax error at line 27: `;' unexpected
expr: syntax error
configure: warning:
*** libgimpprint version is too old.
*** You need at least version 4.2.0.
configure: error:
*** Check for libgimpprint failed. You can download it from
*** http://gimp-print.sourceforge.net/ or you can build without it by passing
*** --disable-print to configure (but you won't be able to print then).
There are two (probably trivial) problems: a syntax error in
gimpprint-config (works with bash but not with the standard /bin/sh)
and an incorrect diagnostic from the gimp's configure script. These
problems can probably be solved easily (I don't have the time to do
that now but I will try next week) but it is a pity that the first
impression of 1.2.4-pre1 on Solaris is not as positive as I was hoping
for. Building with --disable-print works, but it's a pity to loose
support for printing.
I would prefer to have some parts of gimp-print back into the main
GIMP package. This would not be the latest and greatest version and
it may not support all printing systems, but at least it would work
with that version of the GIMP and the users would always have the
option to upgrade gimp-print separately. I think that it would be
better to have one package that provides the basic stuff including
printing support without having circular dependencies between two
packages (even if the workaround is easy).
-Raphaël
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