[Fedora-packaging] Re: paragraph on shipping static numerical libs

[Ralf Corsepius]

On Mon, 2007-05-28 at 11:45 +0200, Axel Thimm wrote:
> On Mon, May 28, 2007 at 09:34:20AM +0200, Ralf Corsepius wrote:
> > On Mon, 2007-05-28 at 00:41 -0400, Bill Nottingham wrote:
> > > Axel Thimm (Axel.Thimm at ATrpms.net) said: 
> > > > > The right fix here is to educate scientific programmers as to why
> > > > > statically linking in libraries doesn't actually get them what they
> > > > > want, and that it is broken.
> > > > 
> > > > Actually the situation in scientific camps is not that easy. There are
> > > > tons of situations where having a statically linked binary saves the
> > > > day. You typically have a complete mix of very heterogeneous Linux
> > > > distributions and releases thereof with semi-bogus libs under
> > > > /usr/local as a bonus. At least that's what larger phys/chem
> > > > institutions and educational facilities look like in
> > > > de/uk/fr/ru.
> > > 
> > > So, my reading of this is 'larger phys/chem institutions are
> > > crazy and don't understand sane systems management'. Am I reading
> > > this wrong?
> > Yes.  
> > 
> > In most cases, these people are non-IT people with little to no skills
> > in program development nor interest in program development. 
> 
> Well, they are not really idiots.
Nobody said that. 

Most of these guys are just beginners to everything but "algorithms",
which to them means "math".

They never heard nor thought about "sockets", "ipc", i18n, threading,
ABIs/APIs, system-integration, ... etc.

> Anyway, we're getting off-topic, the facts are that there are camps
> that rightfully use static libs a lot. Either Fedora cares about these
> camps, or they are considered a minority to not really cater for their
> needs.
IMO, this is not a matter of "minorities" nor of demands. I feel this to
be a matter of "limitation of knowledge" trying to push their mistakes
into the distro.

Ralf