C++ compatibility package dropped

[Jeff Spaleta]

On 6/27/05, Mike Hearn <mike at plan99.net> wrote:
> Nope, probably not, and bundling private libstdc++.so versions is likely
> to be the route we'll take. That's a shame because it's 3mb of overhead
> most apps don't want, but if there's no other way then so be it.

I find that argument about statically linking... satisifyingly
ironic... considering part of you argument for installing it by
default is that users don't really caring about a a few 3 mb
compatibility packages on the system here or there.  I think  you
should probably avoid arguments reference when 'most' 3rd party
vendors or 'most' users want. I think 'most' of the people watching
the conversation probably agree that neither of us is in a good
position to know the desires of 'most' of either population.

> Well, the whole point of soname versioning and renaming the library when
> it changes its exported interface is so they can be parallel installed. I
> don't think it's too much to ask that it's installed by default which is
> definitely a downstream decision.

We disagree. Some libraries are unstable, and I think software vendors
should be responsible for doing their own due diligence about what to
expect in terms of promised stability of the interface BEFORE they
decide to link dynamically to a library.  Since this whole 'platform'
idea seems to be your cup of tea, perhaps you can make a summary list
of which libraries have a commitment by the upstream project for ABI
and API stability as a guide to 3rd party software vendors to use to
make decisions about what to dynamically link against.

-jef