HEADS-UP: Transition to guile-2.0.x and a new compat-guile1.8 package

[Jan Synacek]

On 10/23/2012 11:55 AM, Kalev Lember wrote:
> I agree, updating 21 packages is a bit too much at this point in F18
> schedule.
> 
> However, a way to make this work for F18 would be creating a parallel
> installable guile20 package. So instead of what you are planning now:
> 
> guile-2.0.x
> compat-guile1.8-1.8.x
> 
> We'd have:
> guile20-2.0.x
> guile-1.8.x
> 
> This way no apps need to be updated for the guile -> compat-guile1.8
> transition. Instead, they could be ported to guile20 at their own pace
> and there wouldn't have to be a flag day for switching all of them over
> at once.
> 

This is what I had originally in mind. After trying to realize this idea and
consulting it with the maintainer (I'm a comaintainer of guile), it didn't seem
right. The problem is that a lot of things have to be renamed, including some
autotools macros, and that creates a lot of mess long term (if it was done the
the new package). With the compat package however, this are renamed as well, but
it's the old stuff and then you can only slightly patch (mainly spec, no code
changes needed) the old apps so they compile and run and don't have to worry
about future changes. After guile is upgraded to 2.0.x, you can slowly start
porting as well.

Huh, I hope my point is clearly visible in my slightly complicated message..

Cheers,

-- 
Jan Synacek
Software Engineer, BaseOS team Brno, Red Hat