[Fedora-packaging] Another clarification of the static library packaging guidelines

[Richard W.M. Jones]

Michael, I'm on the defensive here because I've poured a huge amount
of work == time into getting OCaml packages into Fedora, to the stage
where we are almost now competitive with Debian.  So I get defensive
about this.

I got an email saying that a package was "violating the Static
Packaging Guidelines", and there's another email in this thread (from
kanarip, not you) saying "such exceptions to the general packaging
guidelines should not be allowed".

The issue I'm talking about is ...

On Tue, Jul 06, 2010 at 05:58:17PM +0200, Michael Schwendt wrote:
> With "this" == what?

... Is separating out static code into -static packages
(a) useful (b) possible (c) something that should be applied
to code other than unsafe compiled languages like C/C++?

(a) Useful: Yes for making it possible to do security updates quickly.

(b) Possible: For a lot of code.  But not for inlined code.

(c) Applied to non-C/C++: In the best of all worlds yes, but in
reality this has not been a problem for OCaml code.

> I've asked about exceptions to the static library packaging guidelines.
> This has lead to helpful replies, such as those about Tcl/Tk stub libs.
> The bz tickets filed about those packages have been closed automatically.

Indeed, and I fully support your aims of making the QA of packages as
automatic as possible, and even of automatically opening bugs.  If it
seems like I didn't, then that wasn't intended and I'm sorry about
that.

Rich.

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