Request: gtkhtml3 and libgal2 compatability libs

[Owen Taylor]

On Sun, 2004-10-17 at 11:21 +0000, Michael A. Peters wrote:
> If possible, I would like to see a fedora developer maintain the FC2  
> versions of gtkhtml3 and libgal2 packaged in Fedora Stable as  
> compatability libraries for software (such as gnomesword) that has not  
> yet been updated for the newer versions of those libraries.
>
> It would be trivial to do - the library and devel packages do not  
> conflict with the newer versions that FC3T3 has. I'm guessing at most  
> all that needs to be done is changing the package name to compat-name  
> (I suppose even that isn't necessary, how smart is yum and apt-get with  
> respect to different versions of package with same name?)

In general, compat libraries do have to be renamed; it's at the very
least very confusing to have multiple versions of the same package
around, even if it is possible with 'rpm -i'

> I suspect there aren't many apps that need them, and they will no doubt  
> be ported to the newer versions, but I would like to see them in Fedora  
> Stable if for nothing else than compatability reasons.
> 
> The relative FC2 packages (that I'm requesting) are:
> 
> libgal2-1.99.11-1.src.rpm
> gtkhtml3-3.0.10-1.src.rpm
>
> Both of which build and install fine in FC3T3 as is (but the naming  
> might cause update issues, I don't know)

Basically, it's really expensive (in terms of work and number of
packages) to provide compat libraries for libraries that don't have a
certain level of stability. Which of the dozens of versions of libgal
that have been released in the last few years would you provide
compat libraries for?

And with a program that only works with the older versions, a
compatibility library really isn't a solution since you'll be unable to
rebuild the package. You'd need a compatibility development environment,
which is typically a *lot* of work for a library that hasn't been
designed to allow that.

So, basically, I don't think we'd consider these additions for Fedora
Core. It might be possible to get them into Fedora Extras ... I'm not
sure what the fedora.us policy is on compat libraries currently.

Regards,
						Owen

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