matplotlib-devel Mailing List for matplotlib (Page 6)

Hello guys!
Following up the discussion Benjiamin and me had about a couple of
bugs in Ubuntu[1] and Debian[2], and what Mike wrote on [1], we'd like
to explore the possibility for you to develop a "backend=Auto" mode,
that can discover automatically at runtime the backend to use from the
ones available (in case of multiple backends, let's use a priority
list [gtk, qt, tk, ...]).
Our main goal, as packagers, is to avoid the installation of gnome
dependencies (gtk2 is now the default in both sid and
lenny-near-to-be-stable, for Ubuntu is tk) for kde users (and
viceversa, or any other combination).
One way is to ship a "core" package, that contains the main
functionalities, and some "backend" packages to depends (or even
contains the real backend files, like .so & altera) on the available
gui python bindings.
Related to the above sentence, is this question: how easy is to
"split" backend files? is it enough to separate files under
/usr/lib/python*/site-packages/matplotlib/backends/* in different
packages? But that would only create 3 pkgs: agg, gtk and tk. What
about wx and qt?
Personally, I think we can even attack the problem with a different
solution: continue to ship all the mpl file in the "main" package
(python-matplotlib in Debian & Ubuntu) and then create some "dummy"
packages that simply depends on the python gui bindings (let's call
them python-matplotlib-<ui>), each of them providing a virtual
package, let's call it python-matplotlib-backend. If python-matplotlib
depends on python-matplotlib-gtk OR python-matplotlib-backend, any
backend installed can satisfy that dependency (and the default being
gtk).
Both of them has cons: the first poses problem to us for the
packaging, and both does not solve the problem of not choosing a
default (or requiring to specify another package (the backend chosen)
when installing python-matplotlib); moreover, what other packages
depending on python-matplotlib should do after this change (they
expect mpl to Just Work)?
Another solution (that would save the most of the current work done),
almost the same currently used today is: keep doing the same thing as
of now, but do not install any python gui bindings, but popup a
windows at python-matplotlib install time to ask the user what binding
to use (then create the ad-hoc /etc/matplotlirc file with that
"backend" set) and then ask to install the correct python binding for
the backend chosen. A light version is: keep choosing gtk as default
backend, and clearly document (even at install time) how to change
backend.
What you (upstream and distribution packages users) expect from us
(packagers) about these 2 questions (backend=Auto and multi backend
support)? Of course, any suggestion is very welcome :)
Thanks in advance,
Sandro
[1] https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/matplotlib/+bug/278764
[2] http://bugs.debian.org/502976
--
Sandro Tosi (aka morph, Morpheus, matrixhasu)
My website: http://matrixhasu.altervista.org/
Me at Debian: http://wiki.debian.org/SandroTosi