search

Qucs / qucs

Qucs Project official mirror
http://qucs.sourceforge.net/
GNU General Public License v2.0
1.16k stars 213 forks source link

optional things #780

Closed felix-salfelder closed 4 years ago

felix-salfelder commented 6 years ago

there are issues with optional things that are entangled with the main project. one is the documentation, the other is the cmake build system. there may be more in the future.

i propose to adopt the "anything that can be optional, must be optional" paradigm. this will improve maintainabilty, and enable progress. it will also make contributions possible at a later stage.

c.f. #773, #757, #742

guitorri commented 6 years ago

Cmake build is not on par with Autotools (yet), but it is certainly not optional. It significantly lowers the barrier for new contributors that are familiar with IDE environments such as QtCreator.

For the rest, documentation, adms, ..., I am ok with making them optional. As long as we keep one integration branch/repository to make sure things still work together.

felix-salfelder commented 6 years ago

It significantly lowers the barrier for new contributors

(maybe) true. currently it mainly makes refactoring impossible. refactoring requires work on the plugin system, which somebody needs to implement in a way that works on all platforms, plus incremental changes to make sure it does not break. somebody does not know how to deal with cmake.

in the far end, contributions will be possible as plugins, plugins can bring their own build systems (even scons, if you'd like).

are we in a deadlock?

i have no problem with cmake, i just can't maintain it. i am thinking of a model similar to gnucap. gnucap provides an autotools build system, which does not interfere with upstream development, while anybody can still use it, at will. (what's wrong with that?)

felix-salfelder commented 4 years ago

cmake will be dealt with in #1007. other stuff will become optional during the refactoring, either way,