The looming Python 3(000) monster

James Antill james at fedoraproject.org
Fri Dec 5 21:46:15 UTC 2008


On Fri, 2008-12-05 at 21:29 +0100, Kevin Kofler wrote:
> James Antill wrote:
> > The API is very similar and uses the same shared library
> > name ... so what do you do about all the C programs that link with
> > libpython?
> > 
> > repoquery --whatrequires 'libpython2.5.so.*'
> 
> The same thing we do about kdelibs3 and kdelibs 4 coexisting: move one (or
> both) of the 2 conflicting -devel symlinks to a subdirectory of the libdir
> and have the dependent packages use -L flags.

 You are confused, this isn't the same as KDE because _KDE isn't a
programming language_.

> > ...are you going to offer two versions of rhythmbox?
> 
> But Python is not an application, it's a programming language and a set of
> libraries. Shipping 2 versions of an application doesn't make much sense
> (and in fact we don't do that for KDE 3 and 4), but libraries (e.g.
> kdelibs3/kdelibs4) and programming languages are different. Getting
> everything which depends on the library/language ported at the same time is
> almost always infeasible for incompatible versions.

 Again, you are confused. Yes, you can ship two different libraries that
two different applications can use ... like gtk1/gtk2, but you can't mix
them within an application.
 And that's much more common within a programming language. For example:

http://live.gnome.org/RhythmboxPlugins/WritingGuide

...you have:

application => libpython* => plugin [ => python modules ]

...here you _must_ ship one layer of python throughout, saying "it
should be compatible" works about as well as saying "we should be able
to run kde3 and kde4 in a single applications" ... you can ask for it,
and a pony at the same time, but don't hold your breath.

-- 
James Antill <james at fedoraproject.org>
Fedora




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