Re: UML plugin...

[Tim Ellis <Tim Ellis gamet com>]

On Thu, 15 Aug 2002 13:22:22 +0100 (BST)
Alan Horkan <horkana@tcd.ie> wrote:

> is there a way to make dia more inclusive, to make it obvious that these
> programs are essentially part of dia too?

<snip>...

> and as a result focus new
> people to use what is available and avoid the NIH Syndrome (not invented
> here).   Do distributions ship Dia with these valuable add-ons? if not
> why not?

My experience tells me usually because it's more work, and most
maintainers aren't paid a fulltime salary to do this anyway. Depends on
the maintainer. Usually if you're too hard-nosed about adding lots of
extra work, the maintainer says one of two things: "Fork it if you care so
much" or "Oh, I'd be happy if you took over the maintainer position for
me!"

> Is there a package available with Dia and all the bells and whistles
> (xslt, autodia, tediasql, etc) in a fairly easy to install static build?

The simplest (technical) solution seems to me to be: include such extras
as optional dependencies to Dia (does RPM/.deb have such functionality?)
so that Manrake/Redhat/Debian (etc...) distros could install these other
tools, then adding functionality to Dia to allow it to recognise the
installed-status of these other tools and have hooks to them(in the case
of tedia2sql, a save/exec combo) and thus use them if installed.

Even as a non-maintainer, I appreciate the difficulty involved with
distributing these add-ons as part of the Dia package itself.

-- 
Tim Ellis
Senior Database Architect
Gamet, Inc.