Bug#66023: PROPOSAL] Re: Shared libs vs. plugins.

[Richard Braakman <dark@xs4all.nl>]

On Sun, May 06, 2001 at 04:53:12PM +0200, Josip Rodin wrote:
> Yes, but if I amend the proposal like this, then it needs to be seconded all
> over again, doesn't it?

I don't see why.  You need two seconds to go from "proposal" to
"amendment".  To go from "amendment" to "accepted", you need 
consensus on the mailing list.  This consensus presumably
includes the opinions of the original seconders.

Achieving consensus is usually going to involve some minor changes
to the amendment -- that's the whole point of discussing it.
If those changes then invalidate the amendment so that the whole
process has to be started over again, then the policy process would
be quite heavyweight.  I don't think that was the intent.

> > There are already plugins that are not compiled with -fPIC, though.
> > (megahal and wine have some on my system.)
> 
> Hmm, but is there a reason against that, are we certain that those plugins
> must be relocatable?

That's a technical question which needs a technical answer -- and I
don't have it.  (Not at midnight, at least :).  I'm under the
impression, though, that if the plugins are not relocatable, their
code pages will not be shared between processes that use them.
That would be wasteful.

Richard Braakman