Upgrading libpng: shall we move to 1.4.x or 1.5.x?

[Tom Lane]

Kevin Fenzi <kevin at scrye.com> writes:
> Some quick questions: 

> Whats upstreams schedule like? How long will 1.4 and 1.5 continue to be
> supported, and when do they plan on a 1.6?

1.4 will be supported for a long time, though presumably not as long as
1.5.  I don't think there are any active plans for an incompatible 1.6
at all.

My own agenda though is that I'd like Fedora to be on 1.5 in the next
release or two, so that Red Hat isn't in a position of still needing
support for 1.4 eight or ten years from now due to it being in future
RHEL branches.

> Is there possibly a way to switch to 1.4, but warn (buildtime) about
> this going away soon, etc? 

Well, 1.4 does put __attribute__((__deprecated__)) labels on all the
png_info struct fields.  (They're actually there in the 1.2 headers
as well, but not enabled by default.)  However, how many Fedora
maintainers worry about fixing mere compiler warnings?  I know I can't
claim to spend any time on that, except with my upstream hat on.

			regards, tom lane