[vtkusers] New vtk debs based on CVS source: some comments.

[Daniel J. Blezek, Ph.D.]

Dave, Prabhu, et. al.,

> I wish you were still maintaining the RPMs!  Or even better, if you
> could incorporate this functionality into the Makefile.

  Actually, I'm still maintaining the RPMs.  I've gotten so little
feedback from the VTK community on the efficacy of them, that it isn't a
surprise to me that they don't work quite as people expect.  Given the
open source nature of VTK, I'm happy to incorporate changes to the RPM
build process, and, if desired, I could set up a system to produce Debian
packages as well.

  I did spend some time at the beginning of the year getting the VTK
install process in a bit better shape to get the RPMS going, but since no
one around here uses the Java and Python bindings, their install is
probably broken.  Again, I'm happy to help out.

I do have a good handle on the install process for VTK, and user.make.  At
one point I tried to move the functionality of user.make into the
configure.in file, to reduce the confusion caused by user.make, and to
make the "./configure; make install" work as expected, but it broke our
testing builds, and I backed it out without resolving the issue.  Perhaps
with some assistance from the Python/Java users, we can get this into
shape...

-dan

P.S.  Thanks Prabhu for getting the RPM's started, and to Dave for the
updated spec file.




--
Daniel Blezek, Ph.D.
blezek at crd.ge.com
Visual Information Program
Electronic Systems Lab
GE Corporate Research & Development