[Xastir] Better and/or Easier Way to Get Xastir on Windows

[Curt, WE7U]

Looks like Jason's e-mail was private to me, but I don't think I can
get him in trouble for posting his comment back to the list!

On Fri, 10 Nov 2006, Jason Winningham wrote:

> works for me.
>
> I really like the idea if integrating shapelib support directly into
> xastir, but then I wouldn't be doing the work...

Well...  Gerry sent a note to Frank Warmerdam, the maintainer of
many of the map libraries we use.  We have the ok to do that!

We could have NWS weather alert support compiled in from the get-go
on all new Xastir installations if we took advantage of that, plus
distribute a base map of the world in Shapefile format.

Developers:  What do we think of adding a private copy of Shapelib
to our CVS sources?

We could check whether Shapelib was available in "configure".  If
not, compile/install our local copy before compiling Xastir, or even
include the stuff directly in the Xastir src directory and just
compile it in directly without depending on installed libraries.

Either of these methods would be a bit of work, plus we'd have to
update the Shapelib sources from time to time.  It'd be an ongoing
maintenance headache to keep it sync'ed with the latest Shapelib
sources.

I'm starting to think we should merge the Shapelib files in with
ours and compile it all together as one executable.  Those that need
the optional tools for Shapelib could download/install Shapelib
separately.

Hmmm, could version differences between our private copy and a
separately-installed copy mess us up?  Probably not if we compile it
statically into the executable instead of installing/ linking to a
shared library.  If we installed our private copy as a shared
library and linked to it then we could get into version differences.
Now:  Xastir's "configure" checked for an installed copy first, then
that bit is easily solved:  Anyone needing the optional tools would
download Shapelib and install as normal, then Xastir wouldn't
overwrite it with it's own copy but would use it instead.

Ok, perhaps either method would work, compiling it into Xastir
statically or using it as a dynamic library as we do now.

Thoughts?

--
Curt, WE7U.   APRS Client Comparisons: http://www.eskimo.com/~archer
"Lotto:    A tax on people who are bad at math." -- unknown
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