db-compat

[Manuel Wolfshant]

Nicolas Mailhot wrote:
> Le mardi 11 novembre 2008 à 00:16 -0500, Jon Masters a écrit :
>   
>> On Tue, 2008-11-11 at 00:23 +0200, Manuel Wolfshant wrote:
>>     
>
>   
>>>> db-4.1 was last the system DB library in RHEL 3/FC1.
>>>>         
>> What's the point of a "compat" library if not to support software built
>> for such systems? 
>>     
>
> Compat libraries are here to help transitions within the repository,
> when some packages have been rebuilt to use the new version and others —
> not. They're killed as soon as this transition is complete because:
> — compat libraries have their own maintainer cost, and we don't want to
> pay it when there are no in-distro users
> — as long as they're available there's the risk someone adds a new
> package depending on them in the repo, making the transition go
> backwards
>
> Thus compat libraries represent a grace period for everyone to
> transition gracefully. That some ISVs do not want to understand this and
> wait till the grace period is over to realise they need to do some work
> is something you should take with those ISVs. Fedora/RHEL provided a
> grace period, they chose not to use it.
>   
Good luck convincing IBM 
(http://www.haifa.ibm.com/projects/verification/RB_Homepage/ ), Cadence 
(www.cadence.com) and Synopsys (http://www.synopsys.com/) about that 
[*]. Until Feb 2008 Rulebase was still built with compatibility with RH9 
in mind. The switch to RHEL4 occured less than one year ago. Latest 
build (this summer)  claims compatibility (as I have said before) with 
RHEL5 but needs db-4.1; Synopsys still has NO official support for 
anything but RHEL 3.0 / 4.0 (but most of their tools do work on 5); 
Cadence has lots of tools which do NOT work on RHEL5. Mentor Graphics 
are the only ones who really support RHEL 5 (via static builds)

> It's the same problem as users wanting to block xorg releases till
> nvidia supported the new APIs, while nvidia waits for new releases to be
> official to start working on those APIs.
>
> Bad service from ISVs that do proprietary software, nothing less.
>   
That is correct. Try convincing the hardware industry to not use the 
tools from the above vendors, in the context where there are only 3 
major players and 2 of them have their own agenda.


-- 
     Manuel Wolfshant       linux registered user #131416
        IT manager    NoBug Consulting SRL
  A: Yes.
  >Q: Are you sure?
  >>A: Because it reverses the logical flow of conversation.
  >>>Q: Why is top posting frowned upon?