ITP: graphviz

Max Bowsher maxb@ukf.net
Mon Jun 20 01:24:00 GMT 2005


Vlad wrote:
>  Official word from the developers is that the package doesn't come
> compile right out of the box, but various  people have reported success
> in doing so after some tweaking.    So if this package is approved I
> will attempt  to track down all the missing dependencies and  create a
> patch for this package to be build under cygwin.
>
>   My primary goal is to buiild the dot program which is used by the
> doxygen package to generate the source  documentation.  I will do my
> best to get the other parts working as well.

Sounds good. I looked briefly at this when I packaged doxygen, but found the many dependencies meant that this is quite an 
undertaking.

>   My plan  is to use as much shared libraries  ( libgd  , libfreetype )
> as practical,  and  link the missing libraries  statically.

That would work, but I would suggest strongly considering packaging the additional libraries as individual packages, and linking 
them dynamically. I took this approach with Subversion's dependencies (apr, apr-util, neon), and it has paid off rather well in 
terms of decreased build times of the main package, and the ability to fix bugs in dependencies independently of the dependant 
package.

>   Here is my proposed setup hint.
> ----------------------------------------------------  cut here
> --------------------------
> sdesc: "graph visualization software"
> ldesc: "Graphviz is open source graph visualization software. It has
> several
> main graph layout programs,  web and interactive graphical interfaces,
> auxiliary tools, libraries, and language bindings.
>
> The Graphviz layout programs take descriptions of graphs in a simple text
> language, and make diagrams in several useful formats such as images and
> SVG for web pages, Postscript for inclusion in PDF or other documents;
> or display in an interactive graph browser.
>
> Graphviz has many useful features for concrete diagrams, such as options
> for colors, fonts, tabular node layouts, line styles, hyperlinks, and
> custom shapes.
>
> In practice, graphs are usually generated from an external data sources,
> but they can also be created and edited manually, either as raw text files
> or within a graphical editor. (Graphviz was not intended to be a Visio
> replacement, so it is probably frustrating to try to use it that way.)"

Wow, that is a *long* ldesc. I'd suggest just the first 2 paragraphs should be ldesc, and put the entire thing in the 
Cygwin-specific README file.

> category: Graphics
> requires: cygwin
> external-source: package

That external-source line is wrong, check the website docs again.

Max.



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