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Re: ImageMagick/Graphicsmagick


(From the context I'm assuming I'm talking to John Cristy, but it would've
been nice if you'd signed your message).

John,

I hope I'm not starting a flame war here, but I feel I have to respond.
Cygwin is an all-volunteer effort, so anyone offering to maintain a
package does so *at his/her own convenience*.  This means, among other
things, that the package is easy to version, that future releases will not
involve a lot of pain to port to Cygwin, that Cygwin-related patches will
be accepted by the upstream maintainers, that they will not snub certain
Cygwin-specific concerns (e.g., directories named "aux", filename case
issues, spaces in filenames, etc), that bugs that manifest only on Cygwin
will not be ignored, and so on.  Whether a package answers all those
criteria is up to the Cygwin maintainer to decide.  AFACS, Harold decided
that GraphicsMagics would be easier *for him* to maintain, and thus that
is what he offered to package.

FWIW, there is no reason why *both* ImageMagick and GraphicsMagick can't
be packaged for Cygwin (barring the obvious file clashes, but those should
be worked out amicably between maintainers), especially if you are willing
to become a Cygwin port maintainer and can demonstrate features that are
present in ImageMagick and lacking in GraphicsMagick (to get votes from
the community).

Also, see some specific replies below.

On Sun, 21 Dec 2003 fedora<at>studio<dot>imagemagick<dot>org wrote:

> [snip]
>
> > Are we not adults capable of making our own decisions?  Bob had nothing
> > to do with this discussion and he has nothing to do with the fact that
> > there is a problem with the way that ImageMagick is handling library
> > version numbers.
>
> Bob chimed in on your mailing list and I was responding to that message.

No, Bob did not "chime in".  He was specifically Cc'd on the list to ask
his opinion on how to best structure the ImageMagick packages given an
obvious (and already discovered by the time he was contacted) problem with
shared library naming.  Why he was contacted instead of you is on Chuck
Wilson's head -- my guess is because his name was sprinkled all over the
ImageMagick ChangeLog/CVS log relating to the build process.  He stated
(and Harold later confirmed, apparently) that GraphicsMagick does not have
this problem.  Also, you didn't seem to be responding to that message.
If you'd like to respond to the original e-mail with the build questions,
here's the reference: <http://cygwin.com/ml/cygwin/2003-12/msg00235.html>
(use the "Raw text" option to get a real mbox-formatted message except for
some header address munging).

> > Hasn't been a problem for us so far.  If you want to prove us wrong,
> > you'd better be prepared to submit some step-by-step examples of how to
> > generate such cases and describe why the differing results are
> > meaningful.  Assuming that you do that, why should we care?  We've only
>
> I could submit step-by-step examples but why waste my time since you do
> claim you do not care.

And he's right in not caring.  It's not his responsibility to provide "the
best" (in whoever's opinion) graphics manipulation package for Cygwin.
All Harold wants to do is build a package that fits his needs and share it
with the Cygwin community (or, perhaps, add a few extras, if they don't
take too much effort and he's feeling charitable).  If you feel that
another package would be of more benefit, feel free to propose to maintain
it by ITPing it on the cygwin-apps list.

> > had the ImageMagick package for less than a month and, quite frankly, it
> > is easier to maintain the GraphicsMagick package because the build files
> > don't create empty directories that I have to go back and delete by
> > hand, among other things.
>
> That's an excellant criteria for choosing a package for the entire CYGWIN
> community :-).

As I said above, Harold is only choosing a package for *himself*.  Nothing
stops you from maintaining a Cygwin port of ImageMagick.

> > Nope.  I packaged ImageMagick, then I found GraphicsMagick and was
> > convinced (by the code, not rhetoric) that it is superior for our
> > purposes.  I will not continue to package ImageMagick; I will only
> > continue to package GraphicsMagick.
>
> Again, you have not investigating the best solution here.  You have
> made up you mind based on just a few criteria and you are shoving it
> down everyones throat.

No, he's volunteering to support the package that he feels would provide
the most return for the least effort.  Anyone not happy with that can
provide their own favorite package.

> Given your strong statements and clear unwillingness to discuss which
> project is best based on merit, don't bother replying.

Apparently, there are different criteria of merit.

> I will not waste anymore of the CYGWIN community's time on a dead
> subject. I will tell the CYGWIN community that ImageMagick Studio
> intends to have full support of ImageMagick 5.5.7 and 5.5.8 Beta for
> CYGWIN and both source and binaries will be available on
> ftp://ftp.imagemagick.org/pub/ImageMagick.

Is this an ITP? ;-)  If so, please read <http://cygwin.com/setup.html> and
follow the instructions on how to submit a package into the official
distribution.
Thanks,
	Igor
-- 
				http://cs.nyu.edu/~pechtcha/
      |\      _,,,---,,_		pechtcha@cs.nyu.edu
ZZZzz /,`.-'`'    -.  ;-;;,_		igor@watson.ibm.com
     |,4-  ) )-,_. ,\ (  `'-'		Igor Pechtchanski, Ph.D.
    '---''(_/--'  `-'\_) fL	a.k.a JaguaR-R-R-r-r-r-.-.-.  Meow!

"I have since come to realize that being between your mentor and his route
to the bathroom is a major career booster."  -- Patrick Naughton


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