Re: RFC: SDL and X static extension libraries re-revisited
On Thu, 2001-11-01 at 14:53, Branden Robinson wrote:
> On Thu, Nov 01, 2001 at 02:21:45PM -0500, Joe Drew wrote:
> >
> > This is getting absurd.
>
> What is so offensive about it?
It feels too much like a hack. This should never have happened in the
first place; these libraries should have worked on all platforms because
people had thought it out and tested everywhere before making we who are
concerned about portability work around the problems.
> You know any volunteers? Debian needs to be guarded about telling
> upstream developers when and how to stablilize their interfaces. They
> are (presumably) part of the Free Software community with whom we made
> our Social Contract.
Well, there's no real need for them to stabilise their interfaces; we
just have to ensure that when binary-incompatible changes are made we
make a new package. Of course stabilised interfaces would *help* but
they're not strictly necessary.
> I'd say the very existence of libgnomeprint15 and libgal206 (or whatever
> it's up to today), are strong arguments FOR the recently ratified Policy
> amendment that permits omission of shared versions.
I'd be more inclined to say it points more to one of the strengths of
our packaging policies. By having separate packages for
binary-incompatible library versions, we make sure these issues don't
come up. (The only real problem I have with it is that people are
really, really quick to pull an old version of a library even if other
things still depend on it, *cough* *cough* libao0)
> > Hell, it can't be that difficult to write up a quick test client that
> > will just test the .so files to see if the binary interfaces have
> > changed. It can be automated and everything. I'll do it, if need be.
>
> I am willing and able to do the work required under the present
> scenario. I wish people weren't so i386-centric. "Works for me" is not
> an acceptable approach in an operating system that's slated to support
> 12 architectures in its next release.
If a .so version of the libraries were available, all architectures
would Just Work. (Of course, we've already gone down this road, so we
may as well make it work for everything, including SDL-using plugins.)
If there's little chance of getting XFree86 to make a better fix (.so
versions of the libraries), I will support this proposal. (Just let me
know when SDL will be updated.)
--
Joe Drew <hoserhead@woot.net> <drew@debian.org>
Please encrypt email sent to me.
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