ghostscript +gslib variant

[Ryan Schmidt]

On Aug 21, 2007, at 18:53, Bryan Blackburn wrote:

> On Aug 21, 2007, at 3:48 AM, Ryan Schmidt wrote:
>
>> ImageMagick +gs requires the "gslib" component of Ghostscript. But  
>> the ghostscript port doesn't build gslib by default. So, to  
>> properly install ImageMagick +gs, you need to first install  
>> ghostscript +gslib [1]. This is cumbersome.
>>
>> Is there a compelling reason why the ghostscript port shouldn't  
>> just build gslib all the time? It would seem to simplify things.  
>> It's not like it requires any additional dependencies. This goes  
>> back to the ideas in the other thread on this list recently, that  
>> ports should build the most feature-complete software they can, so  
>> long as it's not terribly inconvenient to do so. And in this case  
>> I don't see any inconvenience in doing so.
>>
>>
>> [1] That is, I assume this required. A comment that was already in  
>> the portfile when I took it over says ghostscript with gslib is  
>> required. I have not yet gotten ImageMagick +gs to work, or  
>> rather, I'm not sure how to determine if it is working.
>
> That's why I originally set it up to depend on gplghostscript (or  
> gnughostscript at the time, before the naming change from GNU to  
> GPL), which does build (or at least did, last time I built it)  
> libgs without any extra effort.  Wow, that's quite a bit of  
> parenthetical parts, hopefully it makes sense.

Yeah... you see how it's confusing!

> Also, a quick look at the ghostscript Portfile suggests that +gslib  
> actually builds a framework, not libgs, so I have no idea if IM is  
> going to be able to use it for its ghostscript use.

I noticed that too, that it builds a framework. Again, I have no idea  
how to test that ImageMagick is actually attempting to use gslib. I  
have read, though, that ImageMagick will happily use the gs binary if  
it cannot find gslib. gslib is just a performance enhancement. Given  
that, I'm wondering if I should just remove the gs variant from  
ImageMagick entirely. Users who want Ghostscript support in  
ImageMagick can then simply install the ghostscript port.