rawhide report: 20080211 changes

[Michael Schwendt]

On Fri, 15 Feb 2008 13:27:45 +0000 (UTC), Kevin Kofler wrote:

> Ignacio Vazquez-Abrams <ivazqueznet <at> gmail.com> writes:
> > So then don't make it a compat-* package.
> > 
> > https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-February/msg01009.html
> 
> This distinction you and Michael Schwendt are making between compat packages 
> with or without the "compat-" prefix doesn't appear to be shared by all 
> maintainers. I see the following packages in Rawhide matching compat-*-devel:
> compat-guichan05-devel-0.5.0-8.fc9.i386.rpm
> compat-guile-16-devel-1.6.7-7.fc8.i386.rpm
> compat-libosip2-devel-2.2.2-15.fc8.i386.rpm
> compat-wxGTK26-devel-2.6.4-2.i386.rpm

Notice that that last one on that list is mine. ;)
And I regret that I used the compat- namespace like other packages
around that time (e.g. the previous compat-wxGTK version).

> By the way, the _only_ case where a compat package without a -devel package 
> makes sense is for an ABI-only change where the new package is 100% 
> API-compatible (and thus software can easily be rebuilt).

Have you ever wondered why Fedora still includes compat-libstdc++-296
and compat-libstdc++-33 and how they are built?

> Otherwise you're 
> penalizing software which is built from source (and thus needs the -devel 
> package) over software shipped as a binary (which can just use the compat 
> library), which disadvantages Free Software, so it's counterproductive.

I've read that section twice, but still don't understand it. See the
lengthy paragraph in this thread I referred to earlier,

  Message-Id: <20080214130348.1e17f695.mschwendt at gmail.com>

it gives the background.

There is no penalty involved at all. Fedora doesn't ship prebuilt binaries
in packages that cannot be rebuilt.

I do not demand that an older xerces-c must be built as a compat-
package without any means to rebuild other packages against it.

I only request that if the alternative version of a library is meant
to be for concurrent development, it ought not be shipped as a compat-
package, but as a xerces-c27 and xerces-c27-devel pair of packages.