Re: [Discuss-gnuradio] PyBOMBS: First impressions and optional dependencies

[Tom Rondeau]

On Sun, Jul 28, 2013 at 6:40 PM, Alexandru Csete <address@hidden> wrote:
> On Fri, Jul 26, 2013 at 4:27 PM, Tom Rondeau <address@hidden> wrote:
>> On Thu, Jul 25, 2013 at 7:28 AM, Alexandru Csete <address@hidden> wrote:
>>> Greetings,
>>>
>>> Yesterday, I started playing with pybombs and fixed a few recipes
>>> related to gr-osmosdr. During this process I made gr-osmosdr depend on
>>> uhd, rtl-sdr, osmo-sdr, hackrf and gr-iqbal. I did this to ensure that
>>> all supported input devices are made available to users. It should be
>>> noted that all these packages are optional and gr-osmosdr would work
>>> just fine with gnuradio as the only dependency still supporting
>>> funcube dongles and I/Q file sources.
>>
>> Alex,
>>
>> Thanks for the report and all of the patches you submitted to PyBOMBS.
>> It's a new project and will definitely need wide-spread testing and
>> help to get working well on various systems and for various needs.
>>
>>> Later I will be adding a recipe for the gr-fcdproplus OOT source block
>>> and add that as a gr-osmosdr dependency as well. This works well for
>>> now since all these driver libraries are recent and well maintained.
>>> However, as time goes this driver list will grow and the risk of
>>> something breaking will increase. This made me think whether there may
>>> be a need for a weaker dependency specification, something like the
>>> "recommends" section in deb packages or the "variant" in macports?
>>
>> The 'recommends' is a very interesting idea. I'm not sure I like
>> forcing the installation of all of the base drivers for gr-osmosdr,
>> but if we have a menu-driven section if the dependencies are
>> recommended and allow the user to select which, if any, to also
>> install, that'd be great.
>>
>> Would you open a feature issue on the PyBOMBS Redmine page suggesting this?
>
> Done.

Thanks!

>>> As an alternate solution here & now, we could just remove all optional
>>> dependencies from the gr-osmosdr recipe and instruct users to install
>>> their preferred driver libraries prior to installing gr-osmosdr. Or
>>> create meta-recipes that would provide the most common combinations. I
>>> don't know what would be the best solution.
>>
>> I'm not sure, either. Until we figure out a concept like the
>> recommendations, my preference is to not include them as dependencies,
>> but I could be persuaded out of that thought. I'm guessing Philip
>> would argue for a meta-layer :)
>
> Maybe as compromise we can remove all optional dependencies except
> rtl-sdr and uhd. That would provide a good default for 95% of the
> users today and only require rtl-sdr as extra package since the
> gnuradio recipe already depends on uhd.
>
> Alex

I can see that, especially since we have uhd as a dep for gnuradio,
too. Also, rtl-sdr is lightweight and only depends on libusb, so it's
a pretty safe one to install. And yeah, I agree, that takes care of
most people's needs right now.

Tom