Advice about upstream using old libraries

[Mikolaj Izdebski]

On 01/04/2015 09:33 AM, Javi Roman wrote:
> The Apache Flume upstream code is using a old library (Apache Thrift
> v0.8.0) however Fedora packages are using Apache Thrift 0.9.1 since
> log time ago [2]. The problem is the v0.9.1 version breaks the
> upstream building [3], and nobody is working in the issue right now.
> 
> The question is about the steps or procedure from a Fedora packager
> point of view:
> 
> 1. Try to fix the break code by myself, or working with the upstream
> people in order to fix it (probably complex task).
> 2. Try to package the older version of the library and make it
> available in the fedora packages repository.

There is no universal aswer here, the right choice depends on number of
factors, including:
- is the old version still maintained by upstream?
- is it difficult to port to newer version?
- would upstream eventually accept the patch?
- are there other packages that require older version?
- what impact has using different version than upstream? (estimate)
- ...

Usually it's best to start with 1st option and fall back to 2nd one if
there are some problems. My algorithm in most cases is:
- check if upstream already tried to update to newer verion
- if not then attempt to prepare the patch yourself
- if it's too hard to prepare patch, fallback to creating compat package
- build and test rpm package with the patch created
- send the patch upstream

-- 
Mikolaj Izdebski
Software Engineer, Red Hat
IRC: mizdebsk