Re: [Discuss-gnuradio] No module name gnuradio

[Lamar Owen]

On Monday 24 October 2005 20:07, Robert McGwier wrote:
> KD7LMO has excellent instructions on how to build to a non global
> libraries, etc.  This prevents disruption of things that depend on the
> base install versions.  I know,  it finally took a reinstall to
> straighten my mess out.

While on the surface this seems to be a good idea, I have enough experience 
with these sorts of things to know that it is a bad idea from a 
maintainability standpoint.  Been there, done that with PostgreSQL; 
maintained the RPMset for five years as a result.  And while I don't want to 
belittle the effort put into those instructions (they do work well, after 
all), I do want to point out that many people simply think that's too much 
effort.  They want the Regular Package Tools to Just Work.

If I want to build a GNUradio RPMset (which is a goal) then the GNUradio stuff 
has to play nice with the dependency resolution system.  Plus I have this 
thing against multiple versions of libraries taking up space that I need for 
other things (like radio observations).  And installing specific items from 
source breaks the system's dependency resolution and vastly complicates 
system administration (I will end up with a dozen or more systems with 
GNUradio installed here; with yum and RPM's I can be assured all systems are 
identical and easily rebuilt from scratch in a rapid manner).  I have enough 
complications with cfitsio, PSRCHIVE, and TEMPO without having to track yet 
more from-source packages.

The ideal thing for me (and perhaps for GNUradio on RPM distributions) is the 
ability to point yum at a repository for GNUradio and issue 'yum install 
gnuradio-examples' and the system simply pulls everything needed for 
gnuradio-examples to run (but nothing more).  The key is 'but nothing more'; 
suppose I want the text mode usrp GNUradio stuff, but don't want the gui at 
all.  Simple enough to make happen in a yummable repository situation.

For that matter, you point the Smartpm GUI or Synaptic at the repository (for 
synaptic, an apt repo would need set up) and select the pieces you want from 
the gui, and the depsolver Does The Right Thing and grabs what you need (and 
only what you need) to make it work.

This is the NORMAL WAY packages are installed in the world of Fedora, 
Mandriva, SuSE, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, etc.  For that matter, the same is 
true of Debian, just using .deb packages instead of RPM's.

Point being that, if I don't want to have a compiler and development tools 
installed I don't have to (for instance, don't need SWIG except to build, 
don't need python-devel except to build, etc).  Of course, if you want to 
build from source that is your prerogative.  But a user shouldn't be forced 
to do so to use the system.
-- 
Lamar Owen
Director of Information Technology
Pisgah Astronomical Research Institute
1 PARI Drive
Rosman, NC  28772
(828)862-5554
www.pari.edu