[Bf-committers] Static linux version, drop?

[Giuseppe Ghibò]

Alberto Torres ha scritto:
> The amd64 version seems to work ok on Debian squeeze, but there is an
> unmet dependency: libxi6 >=1.2.0. Debian testing and stable has
> 1.1.4-1. It seems to work ok though. Should I test it with a tablet?
>
> Ubuntu hardy and intrepid has 1.1.3.
>
> The only important difference between libxi6 versions I've found is a
> backported feature from xinput 2.0: device properties. If Blender
> doesn't use it, I guess there will be no problem changing the required
> version to 1.1.3 or 1.1.4.
>
> DiThi
>
> 2009/5/27 Ken Hughes <khughes at pacific.edu>:
>   
>> Good.  I cleaned up some of the library dependencies, added descriptions
>> in the debian/control and debian/copyright files, and built 32-bit and
>> 64-bit versions based on 9.04:
>>
>> http://www1.pacific.edu/~khughes/blender_2.49-1_i386.deb
>> http://www1.pacific.edu/~khughes/blender_2.49-1_amd64.deb
>>
>> Booting from the Live CD, the 64-bit version claims to have all the
>> dependencies met.
>>
>> Ken
>>
>>
>>     
>   
Can someone merge the patch for bug #18679 (it doesn't hurt)? So the 
number of external patches for distro-specific packages can be shrinked. 
Regarding the building of a static version, the problem is the opposite, 
i.e.
rarely a shared blender binary could work on ANY distro, because you 
have always some library missed (at least if you provide a 
"full-optional" blender), and when the libraries match, the version is 
wrong, the glibc requires has more deps, and so on. Also for a same 
distro there are at least two or three supported version (e.g. ubuntu 
have four from 7.10, 8.04, 8.10, 9.04, mandriva 2008.1, 2009.0, 2009.1 
and so on), and often a blender binary built for a certain distro is 
even incompatbile with different version of the same distro. Providing a 
ready for "production" cross-distro binary package IMHO is a very 
difficult issue, as probably you have to start using older compiler and 
older glibc (e.g. those of LSB which for instance use glibc 2.3 [while 
my current installations use for instance glibc 2.8 and 2.9] as lowest 
common denominator). And when you start using older compiler, and 
libraries, you face the typical compilation problems of external 
libraries, which maybe requires newer tools to be compiled.

A version statically linked with mesa could be useful as a reference 
version if people doesn't use the 3d acceleration (which also limits 
most of the blender usage, but at least works), but also misses all the 
distro specs of a distro-package, like for instance availability of 
application in the right KDE|GNOME menu, etc.; but the same applies to a 
binary. To do a recent work in this area for a cross-distro binary, 
probably a "rosetta" stone of the distro should be done, listing which 
are the most widely used distros, which are the libraries they use and 
try to find a common denominator for libraries used. But IMHO it's 
probably easier to build a blender package for any specific distro.

Bye
Giuseppe.