Multilib Middle-Ground

[Patrice Dumas]

On Fri, May 02, 2008 at 10:43:11AM -0500, Les Mikesell wrote:
>
>> A big compatibility issue is shared library sonames.  For
>> standards to emerge, you'd have to define a complete set of compatible
>> sonames.
>
> Yes. Which would amount to each distribution doing less changes.

And not to follow upstream changes? This is not good for fedora. I
completely agree with you that incompatible ABI changes are hurting
free software, but this should be fixed upstream, and not in linux
distros. You could try to approach upstream projects that break ABI
frequently and try to convince them to avoid breaking ABI if you want
to, but fedora cannot do anything else than consuming what upstream
produces.

>> That would mean all compatible distributions would have to be
>> using (essentially) the same version glibc, gcc, X, GNOME, KDE, perl,
>> python, etc. at the same time.
>
> No, it would mean maintaining that standard above with required backward 
> compatibility.  You'd only have update libs to match the newest app rev you 
> want to run.

This is not that different than what is done in fedora. Of course we may
wait for an application that use new features of an ABI modified
application to be needed, but it wouldn't be very different from what we
do now. You could try to push the idea that within a fedora version ABI
compatibility should be kept if possible, but between fedora versions,
I think that it is better to follow upstream.

> Just because some developer writes some incompatible code doesn't mean 
> distributions have to ship it.

What do you propose instead? Not following upstream?

--
Pat