[osg-users] Can't build OSG 2.4 on Windows following GettingStarted guide

[Mike Weiblen]

Hi Ben,
responses inline...

On Thu, May 1, 2008 at 2:31 AM, Ben Discoe <ben at vterrain.org> wrote:
> Mike,
>
> Thanks very much for all you do with putting up the dependencies.
>
> > um ok.  On Dependencies
> > the second paragraph (_before_ mention of the almost 3 year old .zip
> > archive) clearly informs: "[..] required for
> > OpenSceneGraph-2.3 and later, is maintained by Mike Weiblen, and can
> > be download/browsed via svn at:"
>
> Uh, having people log into source control to grab some headers/libs is mighty strange; nigh unheard of.  (IMHO Libs are binaries and should never go into source control in any case.)  Like many people, i skipped over the strange mention of SVN to find the actual downloadable header/libs.

Maintaining the public access to the 3rdParty stuff via svn was
entirely my decision, to reduce my maintenance burden.  Using
Subversion's 'svn:external' property (essentially a
platform-independent symbolic link), one can completely avoid having
to download and integrate ever changing .zip snapshots; one single svn
update can update both your source trees and their dependencies.  The
whole issue of stale/obsolete .zip files goes away, It's really quite
nice.

Making .zip snapshots effectively introduces a second layer of manual
version control on top of svn.  Given the choice, I personally always
prefer a project's svn over their packaged .zip snapshots.  Ex: I have
one svn project that consists solely of empty directories and
svn:external references; w/ one svn update, a dozen completely
unrelated projects are synced to their current trunk.

Admittedly using svn for distribution is a bit off the usual path, but
we're all developers here, and I feel this is a sound idiom to pursue.


> > Also, for the convenience of folks that have difficulty access svn, I
> > recently posted a .zip snapshot of the current 3rdParty.  I annouced
> > it on this list a day or two ago.
>
> Yes, but that's vc8 only.  I have to build both vc71 and vc8.

Yep, well, I actually build the 3rdParty binaries for my own use;
making them available to everyone else is a sideeffect.  I no longer
have access to a vc71 development system.  If you do make a set of 71
binaries, I'm sure there are folks that would really appreciate access
to them.

> Ultimately, by doing detective work, i was able to get closer:  I grabbed the new freetype and built it myself.  But IMHO there's really no good reason to require people to do that.

I assume you mean for vc71?   (There is no reason for anyone to build
freetype for vc8, unless there are issues I dont know about)

> > That old 2005 .zip was preserved to support folks building older
> > OSGversions, but since that audience is steadily shrinking, it should
> > be marked deprecated or removed.
>
> I wouldn't take it away quite yet, as it's the only option available for vc71 people.  But you should explain about how they need to go find the freetype source and build it themselves.

May I suggest you bundle up your proposed improvements to that wiki
page and send them to osg-submissions?  That way Robert will be sure
to see them and they wont get lost.

cheers
-- mew


-- 
Mike Weiblen -- Austin Texas USA -- http://mew.cx/