Re: GNOME 1 ABI involving libpng
>> Christian Marillat <marillat.christian@wanadoo.fr> writes:
> > Can someone give me at least ONE reason why we should be breaking the
> > ABI of GNOME 1
> One good reason is that :
>
> $ sudo apt-get install libpng2-dev -s
> Reading Package Lists... Done
> Building Dependency Tree... Done
> The following packages will be REMOVED:
> imlib-dev libbonoboui2-dev libdirectfb-dev libgail-dev libglade2-dev
> libgnome-desktop-dev libgnomecanvas2-dev libgnomeprintui-dev libgnomeui-dev
> libgtk2.0-dev libgtkhtml2-dev libgtop2-dev libmagick5-dev
> libpanel-applet2-dev libpng3-dev libwmf-dev libwnck-dev libzvbi-dev
> libzvt2.0-dev
> The following NEW packages will be installed:
> libpng2-dev
Nope, sorry Christian, that's not a reason, let alone a good one.
*I* called for a dependency of libgtk2.0-dev on (some) libpng-dev
because I managed to build a package linked against one libpng while
(something inside of) libgtk2.0-0 wanted to have the other version and
the program didn't work when ran.
After the maintainer was kind enough to add that dependency, *I*
requested libgtk2.0-0 to be linked against libpng3. Why? Because
libqt3 links against libpng3. How is that a problem? Because those
are the current versions of the libraries, and those are probably the
ones which *users* are going to look for once sarge is released. Not
GTK+ 1.2, not Qt 2.x.
*I* also asked the GTK+ 2.0 maintainer to request the removal of that
package from woody precisely in order to prevent having one ABI in one
distribution and another ABI in another distribution, both disguised
under the same package. Said maintainer was stubborn enough to refuse
to do this for whatever reason.
Then, after looking at the big mess that is libpng in sarge, *I*
started looking for a migration path from libpng 2 to libpng 3. During
that discussion I *did* say something about recompiling everything
against libpng3. I never expected people to do neither of a) take that
word by word b) start doing things by themselves without any kind of
coordination. I did try to send a message to d-d-a twice just to let
people know what was going on (and prevent b) from happening); the
message never made it to that list and I never got a reply from
listmaster after inquiring about it. Bad luck.
And then the GTK+ 2.0 maintainer decided to migrate to PNG 3. His
apology was "I sent a message to the list and nobody complained". (And
now I'm susbscribed to this list so I can yell "don't do that" next
time).
But in all that discussion, noone talked about recompiling GTK+ 1.2
against libpng3 in the current state because that's, clear as the day,
a very foolish thing to do. Contrary to GTK+ 2.0, and were not for
that fsck up in woody, these other libraries are part of a *released*
distribution. If "released" doesn't raise some alarm in your head, we
are screwed.
> And this is only the beginning. This number will grow seriously in
> sarge.
Of course it's growing. New packages are being installed in woody and
maintainers are switching to libpng3. And in some cases that's a
mistake (which I am guilty of and am still fixing). But the fact that
this number is growing, doesn't mean recompiling whatever Gnome 1
library against libpng3 is the right thing to do.
> Do you think an user will spend his time to remove/install each time
> he want to compile something against G1 or G2 ?
We are sorry, this is unstable, this thing is not meant to be used by
people who are not willing to put up with the ocassional inconvinience.
We put a reasonable effort in avoiding this inconviniences because we
are ourselves users of that distribution.
And that's the point: pretending to move Gnome 1 to libpng3 at this
point is *not* reasonable.
> You just need to bump the gdk-pixbuf soname and build this package
> against libpng3-dev. Whats wrong with that ? Nothing. Old packages
> linked against libgdk-pixbuf2 still continue to works.
We don't go arround making up sonames.
--
Marcelo | Give anyone a lever long enough and they can change
mmagallo@debian.org | the world. It's unreliable levers that are the problem.
| -- (Terry Pratchett, Small Gods)
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