Hi there, just joined the list.
Ted Gould <ted@...360...> writes:
On Sun, 2009-10-11 at 15:36 +0200, ~suv wrote:
This is an issue mainly on Windows and OS X platforms, because the python modules (and on win32 the python binary itself) are included in the prebuilt packages.
Honestly, since it is only a Windows and OSX problem, it seems like it's something that'll change with the packaging. There is no reason that the packaging can't update while the Inkscape version remains constant. So any solution that we'd give, probably wouldn't have much weight.
Agreed, but IMO Inkscape (the project) should *try* to ship modules of the same relative age across all platforms. After digging into this issue a bit, it looks as though this is just going to be a matter of bugging the folks who maintain the OS X and win32 builds to upgrade now and then.
I'm not against checking python versions, but it seems like a lot for Inkscape to do on it's own. That seems like a distribution problem to me whether it is a Linux distributor or the Windows package.
+1 - no need for Inkscape (the program) to check the deps.
Linux is easy - the packager just recommends or requires python-lxml and python-numpy and the distro versions are pulled in at install time. But because the win32 (and OS X?) installer bundles the two modules it's up to the packager to stay on top of them. And (again IMO) it does not seem unreasonable to ask the packagers to upgrade now and then to keep things (roughly) in sync across all platforms. It's quite likely that they have just been forgotten about since the built-in modules still work with the older modules.
The 2.x version of lxml exposes new functions. So an extension written on linux may not work on windows without upgrading the bundled lxml module or rewriting the extension - which is not going to deter me, but is not very friendly. Hence the bug, and the hope that the win32/OS X installers for 0.47 will ship newer modules.
Anyway - I'm looking forward to helping out where I can. I've been using Inkscape for years (love it!), and now I'm writing an extension for a client (which will become public). After that I'd like to help out with other extension-specific tasks. The proposed extension repository looks like a good fit for me, as I'm no whiz at c/c++ but know python/web stuff pretty well.
Chris