Summary/Minutes from today's FESCo Meeting (2015-10-07)

[Kevin Kofler]

Chris Adams wrote:
> Is that short-sighted?  IMHO yes.  Can Fedora fix that?  Doubtful.
> There are three choices:
> 
> - Fedora attempts to patch in a stable(-enough) ABI, build shared
>   libraries, and unbundle all consumers of said libraries.  This is a
>   large (and growing) amount of work, and there is not necessarily
>   sufficient volunteer time to make it practical going forward.
> 
> - Fedora excludes all such software, reducing the usefulness and
>   relevance of Fedora to a growing number of users.
> 
> - Fedora pushes upstreams for stable ABIs and unbundling, but recognizes
>   the "real world" upstreams are creating, and the demands of many users
>   who just want to have a desktop with the stuff they want to click, and
>   so allows bundling where there's no practical alternative.

You are missing the fourth choice: We simply push ABI-changing updates of 
the library as grouped updates with all dependent packages. This works fine 
as long as the library is not used by too many packages and the ABI changes 
are not so major as to require nontrivial porting. We have already done this 
in practice many times, for several packages. For example, exiv2 updates are 
done in such a coordinated way (usually by Rex Dieter).

        Kevin Kofler