Re: [ft-devel] FreeType Amalgamation

[Werner LEMBERG]

> It is not obvious from looking at just the FreeType source tree
> which .c files actually get compiled, versus which .c files are
> simply included.

What about reading the docs?  The complete list is in INSTALL.ANY!

> Furthermore, creating a new project that used a deep copy of the
> FreeType source tree (so that the published project was self
> contained) is more elaborate than creating a new project that uses
> an amalgamation (which is as easy as adding two files).

IMHO, this is a severe deficiency of MS Visual Studio (and probably
other similar GUI tools) which forces you to `register' files.  The
Unix philosophy to build with the standard command line incantation

  ./configure
  make
  make install

is completely different and doesn't need this approach.  On Unix,
using the standard build tools (autoconf, automake, libtool, make),
adding a complete directory hierarchy is very cheap.

I know this isn't something you can change, so please consider the
above as a side note only.

> At the risk of losing credibility I will admit that I have never
> actually used autoconf and I have no idea what mk fragments are.

`.mk' is often used as the file name extension of sub-Makeiles which
get included by the main Makefile

> All of my experiences with using these tools have been negative.
> When I download sources and I see those files it brings a bad taste
> to my mouth.  All of my development is done on Windows in Visual
> Studio.

I fully believe you.  Since the Windows command line interpreter is
nearly unusable for serious shell scripting, you need a better shell.
Then you need a bundle of additional text tools the shell scripts rely
on.  Only recently support for MSVC has been added to some GNU tools
-- this compiler's command line options are very different and
limited.  And so on.  However, Visual Studio is just *one* possibility
of a workflow, and we try to support more.  And I repeat it: It's not
possible to make FreeType work on all platforms with preprocessor
macros only.

> Designing a library's sources so that pre-build steps are not
> necessary also lets you reach a wider audience - it is a fact that
> external dependencies cause you to lose some non zero percentage
> users.

Again, this is the Windows philosophy, since this OS lacks a serious
package management.  Every project/program must come with everything
it needs.  No chance to reuse any third-party components reliably.  We
have to live with that, and it is good that developers like you are
interested in making FreeType work better under such circumstances.
However, given that FreeType is used in virtually all smartphones,
reaching a wider audience is probably not a big issue for us :-)


    Werner