Policy proposal for compatibility packages

[Denis Leroy]

Jesse Keating wrote:
> On Wed, 02 Jan 2008 18:42:59 +0100
> Thorsten Leemhuis <fedora at leemhuis.info> wrote:
> 
>> The proposal IMHO tries to solve the problem the wrong way. Having
>> compat-packages in the repo is not the biggest problem -- other apps
>> in Fedora using those compat-packages IMHO is what we should prevent.
> 
> There is a difference between compatible library packages and
> compatible development packages.  Compatible libraries make long term
> sense.  Compat development packages don't.

I have to disagree here, you can't possible think about all the use 
cases out there. For example, we ship compat-libstdc++-33.i386, which 
allows us to run an old legacy C++ executable that requires 
libstdc++.so.5. Unfortunately, if you have an old legacy library that 
requires libstdc++.so.5, no luck there, you'll need g++ 3.2 to link with 
it, i.e. compat-gcc-32-c++ which we no longer ship for Fedora (replaced 
by the less useful compat-gcc-34-c++). This is an example of a compat 
development package that would be really useful. Now can I package it 
and submit it for review ?