Please do not reply directly to this email. All additional comments should be made in the comments box of this bug report.
Summary: Review Request: <ppl-0.9> - <A modern C++ library providing numerical abstractions>
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=227669
------- Additional Comments From bugs.michael@gmx.net 2007-02-10 10:19 EST -------
I have added "BuildRequires: gmp-devel". But shouldn't we also have "Requires: gmp-devel"? I mean, the PPL header files include the GMP header files, so to use the library (as well as to build it) the GMP header files must be present.
Right. Then a "Requires: gmp-devel" must be added to "ppl-devel" as soon as it exists.
Moreover, building the library also requires gcc, gcc-c++ and probably many other tools: should these all be listed?
No. C/C++ compilers and a set of other development tools belong into the default build environment and are expected to be present: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Packaging/Guidelines#Exceptions
Also, using the library certainly requires libstdc++ and building requires libstdc++-devel. What is the rationale here?
As above, these belong also into the set of packages, which is a minimal environment for software development. E.g. gcc-c++ "Requires: libstdc++ libstdc++-devel" already, and it's similar for the C compiler and the C Standard Library.
[no static libs]
Is this really necessary?
This is what the Packaging Committee works on: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/PackagingDrafts/StaticLinkage
The PPL consists of one core library and several interfaces (C++, C plus 6 Prolog dialects; in forthcoming version 0.10 there are also an OCaml and a Java interface).
Still, C++ and C are close relatives, and when the main "ppl" package contains the C++ ppl, it doesn't hurt to include the C ppl, too. For the C++/C stuff you then have only two packages: ppl and ppl-devel
For the other languages, sub-packages are better, as they likely create additional dependencies on language-specific packages. And you don't want that the C++ programmer needs to install packages for many other languages.
- To reduce the number of packages further, the distinction between
base and devel packages could be dropped for the other interfaces: it is quite likely that those who need ppl-some-prolog will need also ppl-some-prolog-devel.
This would be in violation of the packaging guidelines. It would be a problem, when run-time components would depend on -devel components which is not allowed.