On Mon, Mar 04, 2002 at 09:15:48AM -0500, Daniel Burrows wrote:
> > - This undoes the changes Branden made back in October which altered the
> > SDL ABI. This means that apps using SDL MAY NEED TO BE RECOMPILED,
> > though the half a dozen games I have linked against the old libs just
> > worked fine for me.
>
> Out of curiosity, why, and do these solve the problems we had with SDL
> that prompted the changes? (failures to compile or problems with
> programs that linked against it on non-i386 architectures, IIRC)
> Also, why are you about to upload a CVS snapshot of a working package
> shortly before we freeze?
The problem was that the X Extension Libraries were static libs linked
into shlibs. The solution to this required that the binaries be linked
with the XEL's. Binaries produced on other dists were not, hence the ABI
disparity between Debian and other dists. What I am about to commit does
not require binaries to be static linked against XEL's because the source
for those libs have been included into SDL with namespace changed to
protect the innocent.
On the plus side, this means that the namespace should not clash with the
binaries Debian has compiled. At least not in theory, anyway. (I did
test several Debian binaries linked against the old SDL to be certain this
worked - it did.) It also means that binaries linked on other dists will
probably run fine, except where they don't - see the next paragraph. =)
On the minus, if the XEL's ever change the wire protocol they use to talk
to the X server, suddenly a handfull of features SDL uses will stop
working in a manner that is NOT TRIVIAL to fix, whereas the previous stuff
would have maybe required a few code hacks and a recompile. It also means
that the ABI is still effectively different - if your code expected the
XEL's to be exported through SDL's ABI, you'll find that this breaks your
program's execution both in Debian and upstream. Sam declared this to
then be Your Problem(TM) and I agree with him. I know of no apps which do
this.
> Is it related to this?
> * Upstream fix for #114808 brings Debian's ABI back inline with that
> used by other distributions (Closes: #136237)
Yup, that's a big part of it right there.
> (I apologize if this seems like an ignorant or hostile question; I
> am ignorant, and it isn't meant to be hostile :) )
Oh no, it's a good question. Especially to ask of a maintainer who has
been more or less dormant in recent months. I will say though that 1.2.x
is the stable API and while minor new features are accepted, nothing that
has any major impact on the code will be unless it's clearly needed to fix
bugs, as this fairly big change has been shown to be. Essentially, 1.2.x
is like our frozen. There are a lot of changes going in, but they all are
to fix little things and are usually pretty well checked to make sure they
break nothing else first.
--
Joseph Carter <knghtbrd@bluecherry.net> Hey, that's MY freak show!
Nothing is a problem once you debug the code.
-- John Carmack
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