[Gnucash-changes] check_data_type, backend configuration and gettext

[Derek Atkins]

Quoting Neil Williams <linux at codehelp.co.uk>:

> On Tuesday 06 September 2005 6:08 pm, Derek Atkins wrote:
>
> (Please read *all* of this one! I know it's long but hey, I wasted a lot of
> time on the getline code currently in CVS!)
> :-))
>
>> I guess I still don't understand why we don't just use the gmodule
>> APIs.
>
> Umm, that would be because there's no mention of that in the docs or 
> comments!
> :-)

I'm pretty sure Linas and I discussed it on -devel about three years 
ago, but at
that time we decided that HEAD should stay gtk-1.2 which means no 
gmodule.  I'm
sorry I didn't bring it up earlier.  It didn't even occur to me to mention it
until now.  I'm sorry.

[snip]
>> Here's a real-world example: On a build-host you happen to have the
>> .la installed.  But it doesn't get installed onto the runtime.  Now
>> you've got your .la and it's expecting the dependent library .la
>> file..  and guess what?  It fails at runtime!  Users get confused as
>> to why it's failing.  But it's working just fine for you on your
>> development system, because you happen to have the right -devel
>> library that has the .la file that it's looking for.  OOPS.
>
> Isn't that just like any other problem with not installing required files? It
> would be the same if an EXTRA_DIST was missing etc. Can't we make the .la an
> EXTRA_DIST target? If we had used that XML file for backend config, that
> would have been a required file causing runtime errors.

Not when it's not OUR file that's not installed.  For example, libfoo-devel
installs the libfoo.la file.  The gnucash runtime picks up that .la 
dependency.
Now the gnucash runtime is dependent on libfoo-devel instead of just 
libfoo. The fact that libfoo.la isn't installed by libfoo isn't 
something GnuCash can
control, but by using the .la file we've created a runtime dependency on the
-devel package.

> It's down to the UI to make sensible error messages out of the problem. My
> code would have picked up this error and complained, GModule can do the same.
> It's a simple stat check.

Unfortunately this is a crasher.  The runtime linker fails to load the 
file and
the program dies.  At least that's been past behavior.  Fixing it so we 
can put
up a dialog would be a nice step forward.

-derek
-- 
       Derek Atkins, SB '93 MIT EE, SM '95 MIT Media Laboratory
       Member, MIT Student Information Processing Board  (SIPB)
       URL: http://web.mit.edu/warlord/    PP-ASEL-IA     N1NWH
       warlord at MIT.EDU                        PGP key available