What Seriously Ails Fedora

[Joe Zeff]

On 05/28/2015 03:09 PM, Gordon Messmer wrote:
> I don't have a good example, so let's illustrate that hypothetically.
> Let's say Fedora includes a terminal application written with boost
> libraries, "boost-terminal".  That application requires boost version
> 1.53, which was included in the release with boost-terminal.  The
> maintainer for boost-terminal goes away, and the package is deprecated.
>   Upgrading Fedora to the next version might not complete successfully
> because the new release includes boost 1.54, which isn't compatible with
> the installed boost-terminal application, and can't be installed in
> parallel with boost 1.53.

What you're saying is, in effect, that boost 1.54 breaks backward 
compatibility and boost-terminal isn't going to get upgraded.  Isn't it 
up to boost's maintainer to see to it that this doesn't become an issue? 
  (Yes, we all know of cases where the maintainer either doesn't check 
properly or simply doesn't care, but it's my understanding that it's 
still part of their job.)  One of the problems the OSS community keeps 
pointing to in commercial software is the way newer versions of programs 
fail to read or write files in formats that older versions understand, 
while bragging that their packages don't suffer from that fault.  Has 
this changed, or is it simply a case of sloppy testing?