db-compat

[Jon Masters]

On Tue, 2008-11-11 at 10:18 +0100, 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

Wow. That's a complete definition of what I take as the meaning of
"compatibility". So it's only compatibility with ourselves that we care
about now then? Cool! Let's throw out any libraries not used in Fedora,
and while we're at it, let's throw out any symbols those libraries
provide that we're not using - after all, we don't need them :)

> — 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

I love this kind of argument being used in Free Software communities. It
gives me the warm and fuzzies. I'm strongly against smoking too, but I'm
not going to ban the sale of cigarettes. I (strangely) take the view
that people can know for themselves what is good and bad for them. I
think most people know if they're (intentionally) using a compat lib.

> 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.

To be fair, the entire world doesn't move at the same pace as a
distribution like Fedora. Yes, maybe it should, but maybe we shouldn't
make it overly difficult for software that works just fine to be used.
If keeping userspace compatibility isn't too difficult, it's generally
something Linux has always favored doing.

> 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.

Er, no it's not. This has no semblance of a resemblance to that
situation - we're talking purely about an optional compat lib.

> Bad service from ISVs that do proprietary software, nothing less.

Cool. Let's blame the non-Free sofrware ISVs at every turn!

(sorry, overly sarky email...nothing personal, just in that kind of
mood, probably too much decaf coffee...)

Jon.