Usage as a library (maybe with a conan package) #189
Replies: 5 comments 10 replies
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Hi @ruanformigoni! DwarFS is designed as a library, but there's no guarantee on a stable interface before v1.0.0. In fact, at the moment, a lot of interface refactoring happens between releases. The API to use DwarFS images is relatively stable, though. I'm going to be honest and say that I don't know much about conan other than that it exists, so I can't judge how much effort it would be to publish/maintain it on that platform. This is definitely something I'd consider as the API stabilizes. If you have a concrete use case and don't mind breaking API changes, I'm happy to accept PRs in case any changes to DwarFS are necessary. |
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Thanks for the reply @mhx , for my use case I use dwarfs in two of my projects, flatimage and gameimage. They are proof of concepts that I prototyped in bash, and now I'm porting to C++. Here is a snippet of how I'm using it at the moment with boost::process: // Compress
ns_subprocess::subprocess(str_image
, "fim-exec"
, "mkdwarfs"
, "-f"
, "-i"
, str_app
, "-o"
, str_target
);It works, but I have to include the dwarfs binary separately, and I want my application to be a single binary. I'll try to integrate with your CMakeLists.txt and provide feedback on what I can. A pre-compiled libdwarfs.a in the releases would help a lot as well, if you'd like I could work on that. Lastly, would you consider compiling with |
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Hi, sorry for dropping the ball on this. I'd be happy to integrate pull requests for musl compatibility, so feel free to give it a shot. Regarding a dwarfs library, I don't currently have plans to provide one. That's not to say I'm not going to change my mind, but I need a bit more time to think about what I want the interfaces to look like. As mentioned before, the API to access images would be relatively straightforward, but the API to build images definitely is not. |
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No problem! Thanks for the reply 😄 |
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@ruanformigoni Sorry for chiming in, I just stumbled upon this discussion.
As it currently stands, dwarfs is licensed under the GPLv3, which has even tighter restrictions, you can't include it in Apache licensed software. @mhx What are your thoughts about releasing a library that can read dwarfs under say Apache or MIT license? I'm thinking about implementing such a library because I believe Dwarfs could make a good container format for things like game engines. Since the format is documented, I assume it's ok with you, but would like to make sure I'm not stepping on your toes. Of course, if dwarfs itself would have the decoding part under a more liberal license, it would make stuff easier when it comes to keeping up to date with improvements to the format, but I think it could be difficult in practise. FWIW, I believe keeping mkdwarfs and the whole creation part under GPL is a good idea, to keep (most) further improvements by other parties available to all. |
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@brakhane Thanks for the info, I'll have to think about changing the license on my side. From what I understood, distributing the binaries from the releases is allowed if the source code (or a clear method to obtain it) is also provided, maybe I'll just keep it that way for now. |
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@ruanformigoni Yes, that is allowed. You can even sell GPL software. The restriction is that you need to give every recipient of the software the same rights you enjoyed: to analyse, modify, and distribute unchanged as well as derivative works, which must also be under the GPL. So flatimage for example would need to be GPL if you include (parts of) dwarfs code in it, though the software that is packed with it wouldn't need to be, as long as flatimage is not required for the software to function. It could be Apache 2 if you implemented a "dwarfs reader" yourself that doesn't use the code from DwarFS at all. The output of GPL programs are not covered by the GPL. |
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Definitely worth thinking about! The decoding part is straightforward and most of the "magic" does indeed happen in the encoder. I'd have to dig into the code to see if I'm missing something obvious, but I'm certainly not opposed to the idea. |
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Please take a look at dwarfs-0.10.0 which I've just published. It's the first release that properly exposes the libraries. There's also some example code. The libraries are split into Licensing |
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Thanks, I'll check it out |
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Is it possible to configure cmake to not create the library files when building dwarfs? |
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Do you mean create or install? :) The libraries must be created, as all tools link against them. If the libraries are built/linked statically, there's no need to actually install the libraries (but right now that's not an option). I can consider adding an option for this in a future release. Until then, you could try replacing in and making sure you pass |
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oh yes, i meant installed. it would be convenient to have it as an option |
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on the other hand, making a development package that contains only those files, could some flags be used to skip unneeded steps? btw would these be the files? |
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That looks about right. Actually, there's support for building the libraries, the tools and the FUSE driver separately. So you could first just build/install the libraries part, then the tools and/or FUSE driver. As for packaging, I would assume there'd be a |
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Greetings,
Is it possible to use dwarfs as a library? It would be great if this project could be published to conan, that way creating C or C++ project that use dwarfs would be quite trivial.
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