[Fedora-packaging] Summary/Minutes from today's FPC Meeting (2014-12-11 17:00 - 18:25 UTC)

[Matthias Clasen]

On Mon, 2014-12-15 at 10:18 +0700, Michel Alexandre Salim wrote:
> 
> On 12/13/2014 12:54 AM, Zbigniew Jędrzejewski-Szmek wrote:
> > On Fri, Dec 12, 2014 at 09:38:52AM -0500, Bastien Nocera wrote:
> >>
> >>
> >> ----- Original Message -----
> >>> On 12/12/2014 03:18 PM, Bastien Nocera wrote:
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>> ----- Original Message -----
> >>>>> On Fri, Dec 12, 2014 at 09:04:19AM -0500, Bastien Nocera wrote:
> >>>
> >>>>> Agreed, a static library is a waste of time. What about a normal
> >>>>> shared library? Do you think patches to do that would be accepted?
> >>>>
> >>>> How does a shared library solve any of those problems?
> >>> I wonder why I have to explain this ;)
> >>>
> >>> It would concentrate/centralize a distributed, undetectable origin of
> >>> bug into one point of maintenance and development.
> >>
> >> It wouldn't solve the problem of not wanting to offer an API to third-parties...
> > Hi,
> > 
> > I understand why upstream did not want to do that, but current
> > situation is not very attractive either. The same piece of library-like
> > code is duplicated in two places in gnome, in cinnamon, and we are talking
> > about duplicating in a fourth place.
> > 
> > FPC wants to have it split out and shared. gvc has the last commmit in
> > git 13 months ago. Shouldn't be that much of an issue to split it out.
> > 
> Having a static lib that goes against upstream's wishes, and that won't
> be used by the core GNOME applications anyway, seems rather anomalous as
> well.
> 
> On the other hand, given that Cinnamon, Budgie, and other GNOME-related
> external projects are using this internal dependency anyway, I'd say the
> intent of not offering an API to third-parties has already failed... and
> not offering a *stable* API should be obvious enough by offering only a
> static lib. We could even add a README.Fedora file clearly stating that
> this library comes with no API stability guarantee.
> 
> Seems that we should go back to the FPC, now that the objection from
> upstream (in some cases overlapping with Fedora package maintainers) is
> clear. At the very least, we need a decision on what to do with shared
> internal modules that are not intended to be used by external third
> parties - like libgd and libg-v-c, but I won't be surprised if there are
> others.
>

I don't think you can really force a package maintainer to provide a
static library for code the is very explicitly not meant to be shared.
Just because others decided to ignore that wish and copied it anyway.

The only outcomes I can see if this is being forced is a) us loosing
package maintainers who are fed up with this or b) upstream starting to
change internal apis every release, just to make copying this code so
difficult that it becomes impractical.