Re: rawhide report: 20080211 changes
On Fri, 15 Feb 2008 13:27:45 +0000 (UTC), Kevin Kofler wrote:
Ignacio Vazquez-Abrams <ivazqueznet <at> gmail.com>
writes:
> So then don't make it a compat-* package.
>
> https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-February/msg01009....
This distinction you and Michael Schwendt are making between compat packages
with or without the "compat-" prefix doesn't appear to be shared by all
maintainers. I see the following packages in Rawhide matching compat-*-devel:
compat-guichan05-devel-0.5.0-8.fc9.i386.rpm
compat-guile-16-devel-1.6.7-7.fc8.i386.rpm
compat-libosip2-devel-2.2.2-15.fc8.i386.rpm
compat-wxGTK26-devel-2.6.4-2.i386.rpm
Notice that that last one on that list is mine. ;)
And I regret that I used the compat- namespace like other packages
around that time (e.g. the previous compat-wxGTK version).
By the way, the _only_ case where a compat package without a -devel
package
makes sense is for an ABI-only change where the new package is 100%
API-compatible (and thus software can easily be rebuilt).
Have you ever wondered why Fedora still includes compat-libstdc++-296
and compat-libstdc++-33 and how they are built?
Otherwise you're
penalizing software which is built from source (and thus needs the -devel
package) over software shipped as a binary (which can just use the compat
library), which disadvantages Free Software, so it's counterproductive.
I've read that section twice, but still don't understand it. See the
lengthy paragraph in this thread I referred to earlier,
Message-Id: <20080214130348.1e17f695.mschwendt(a)gmail.com>
it gives the background.
There is no penalty involved at all. Fedora doesn't ship prebuilt binaries
in packages that cannot be rebuilt.
I do not demand that an older xerces-c must be built as a compat-
package without any means to rebuild other packages against it.
I only request that if the alternative version of a library is meant
to be for concurrent development, it ought not be shipped as a compat-
package, but as a xerces-c27 and xerces-c27-devel pair of packages.