Re: Build requires t1asm

[Johannes Schindelin]

Hi,

On Fri, 18 Jul 2008, Werner LEMBERG wrote:

> > FWIW I also like the idea of having less dependencies, but not at the 
> > price of being unable to hack the source.  Even if that is the source 
> > to a font.
> 
> Well, adding pre-compiled fonts to the tarball just remove a dependency.  
> As soon as you remove the fonts, they are rebuilt. Where's the problem?

Heh.  That is a hard-learnt lesson from another project.

It is a matter of pure _luck_ which timestamp is newer: that of the 
prebuilt font, or that of the source.  (I assume optimistically that you 
do not even think about proposing to not rebuild the font even when the 
source is newer.)

But then comes the worse part: you remove a dependency (actually quite a 
bunch in one go).  Alright.  But let's assume you want to fiddle with the 
font: now you need the programs to rebuild the font.

And here's the rub: since they are no longer dependencies, you have to 
search for them and install them by hand.  There is nothing helping you 
there, and from my past experience with LilyPond, finding and installing 
all the required programs can easily get very, very painful.

It is a fix, I admit.  But at least when you are on a sane platform, you 
can ask the platform's package manager to please install all dependencies 
automatically for you.

Ciao,
Dscho