On Sat, Jan 04, 2014 at 07:07:15PM +0100, László Böszörményi (GCS) wrote:
Does folly have a stable ABI? I remember raising this with Paul some timeago and us deciding that embedding folly into the HHVM source would be the way to go, as there is really no stable interface between them.I can't answer this question. Still, I expect that HHVM will follow ABI changes very fast. Paul? Anyway, I think having a separate package and let users get knowledge of that doesn't mean HHVM can't use an embedded copy if it needs to. But it should be a separate package whenever it's possible.
If the ABI isn't stable, HHVM is the least of your problems. Non ABI stable libraries have really no place in Debian: you have to bump the SONAME, rename the package, go through NEW, binNMU all reverse dependencies, go through a testing transition etc. every time and that's *if* you detect the ABI breakage and it doesn't get silently undetected crashing reverse dependencies (= RC bug).
Check with your upstream (Paul? someone else?) if they're guranteeing ABI, and preferrably also tag versions rather than packaging random git snapshots, *then* upload it. Otherwise it's a pretty pointless exercise and I'm sure it'll get REJECTed from NEW.
For HHVM, embedding the folly source as the upstream build does seems like the best course of action to me, especially since folly isn't a library that we expect to see wide adoption for other packages out there.
Also, you're really supposed to file separate ITPs for separate packages (and file them *before* you make an upload).??? Please see its ITP[1]. I just noted the upload here. It's closed by the changelog in the folly package if that will be accepted into the archive.
The reason ITPs exist and policy mandates that they are Cc'ed to debian-devel is so that all developers have a chance to raise issues (such as naming conflicts, ABI stability, package descriptions, previous work etc.). Filing the ITP and uploading <= 30mins later is a really bad practice and doesn't really count, it feels like working around Policy to me. (it also hasn't even reached my debian-devel inbox yet, did you X-Debbugs-Cc it?)[1]
Regards, Faidon1: You're not the first person that I've told that :) cf. https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2013/06/msg00666.html