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Re: xlibmesa naming and relationships



On Thu, Feb 06, 2003 at 08:54:42AM +0100, Marcelo E. Magallon wrote:
>  I don't like the "3" is any of these packages (xlibmesa3, mesa3g, ...)
>  because it doesn't reflect *anything*.

Not true, as you point out in the very next sentence.

>  In the case of mesa3g is just historical baggage and in the case of
>  xlibmesa3 it reflects something that's an (almost meaningless)
>  implementation detail.

I do not personally feel that the major version number used by a
software project is a meaningless detail.  At least not in the case of
Mesa, where they bump the major version number to reflect major new
developments, like texture and lighting acceleration support.

>  The other reason why I hate that "3" is because I always forget where
>  it goes in the name (to the point that I'm almost sure I got it wrong
>  in what I just wrote).

Well, I don't think anyone is telling you you have to use it.  That I
choose to places no gun to your head.

> On Wed, Feb 05, 2003 at 03:24:07PM -0500, Branden Robinson replied:
> 
>  > > So, while I can't fault your logic of Mesa 3 being in 4.2.1 ... ;)
>  > 
>  > Okay.  I agree.  Given that the soversion isn't terribly meaningful
>  > in the case of Mesa, in my opinion the library package name should
>  > communicate the major version number of Mesa itself.
> 
>  Well, actually the version (the shared object version, mind you) *is*
>  meaningful in the case of Mesa.  It implements version 1.x of the
>  OpenGL API.  If you don't know what that means, please go read *both*
>  the OpenGL 1.x spec and the GLX 1.x spec.  Both are readly available at
>  http://www.opengl.org/
> 
>  In short: the OpenGL API is fixed.  It is extended via so called
>  "OpenGL extesions".  Extensions are usally not visible as symbols being
>  exported by libGL.so.1 but instead there are specialized functions to
>  retreive the addresses of the requested code.  Think dlopen if you
>  wish.  Some extensions eventually make it to the core API and these
>  become available via the library (unfortunately).  The current
>  implementation in Mesa corresponds *almost* to OpenGL 1.4, but the
>  library is still called libGL.so.1.

Yes, I understand all of that.  Thanks for reiterating it for the list,
though.  :)

>  I have been toying with the idea of creating virtual packages libgl1.1,
>  libgl1.2, libgl1.3 and so on, but I see downsides to it with very
>  little gain.

I don't see any reason to do so either, as long as stuff compiled
against one will work with others.

>  For the record: I dislike the proposal of using the Mesa version
>  present in XFree86 as part of the xlibmesaN package name.

It's more than just a proposal, it's already impelemented.

>  Merging Mesa 5 in the XFree86 tree will happen RSN, and as far as I
>  understand Brian's intentions, there will be a Mesa 6...  that would
>  mean changing the name of the package way too often.

I don't feel that way.  The FTP admins have been fairly quick to get new
versions of XFree86 out of queue/new when I change things, and in any
case I don't release new XFree86 packages every week, let alone do
weekly releases that add, drop, or rename binary packages.

-- 
G. Branden Robinson                |      It doesn't matter what you are
Debian GNU/Linux                   |      doing, emacs is always overkill.
branden@debian.org                 |      -- Stephen J. Carpenter
http://people.debian.org/~branden/ |

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