C++ compatibility package dropped

[Paul Iadonisi]

On Mon, 2005-06-27 at 00:17 +0200, Fernando Herrera wrote:

[snip]

> Is gcc 3.3 old and crutfy? Wow. 1 year ago?.

  Bad example.  Read Dan William's post to this list titled "Re: Why no
compat-gcc-3.4.3-22.fc4.i386.rpm ?" and dated "Thu, 23 Jun 2005 23:20:44
-0400 (EDT)".  Gcc32 (compat-gcc-32-3.2.3-47) and GCC4 (gcc-4.0.0-8) are
included which cover enough of the bases.

>  Well, this compat
> breaking from gcc people plus non "old and crutfy" support on distros
> is making C++ (and gtkmm) a non possible platform for ISV's making
> software for Linux.

  You're really blowing this out of proportion.  They can do what VMware
does, for example, by including a copy of gtk2 2.4.0.  Even including it
as an optional component (for older or newer OS releases) would work and
not increase the size of their package for the OS releases they target.

>  And ISV don't have resources to package their
> application for every Linux distro, setting up repositories, etc...
> They just want to put a package and allow people to download it and
> install it easily.

  Then put it in a tarball, provide a short doc with known dependencies,
and allow third parties to submit patches and/or spec files and/or
whatever-it-is-debian-uses-to-build-packages.  Sure, I'd rather see
VMware always released in an rpm package for the latest and greatest
Fedora Core release.  But if they complain, I'd say just externalize
*more* of their costs and let others either package it or provide an
easy way to package it.  (And as a side note, don't have a license that
prohibits this type of activity.)

> We have very few ISV making software for linux now, because we have
> very few desktop share, but this is changing...

  And it will continue to change.  Despite the ISVs.  Make it difficult
for the ISVs for the sake of making it difficult for them?  No, that
would be silly.  But for the sake of forward movement and doing things
better, I don't think we should be bending over backwards to provide
backward compatibility for them.  If C++ developers in particular want
to complain, they need to direct at the GCC C++ team for breaking binary
compatibility.  Fedora Core 4 has the compromise of 3.2.3 and 4.0.0.

-- 
-Paul Iadonisi
 Senior System Administrator
 Red Hat Certified Engineer / Local Linux Lobbyist
 Ever see a penguin fly?  --  Try Linux.
 GPL all the way: Sell services, don't lease secrets