static libraries' policy
Dmitry Butskoy
buc at odusz.so-cdu.ru
Wed Nov 9 14:45:25 UTC 2005
Just repeat in one place:
Last summer a discussion about presence of static libraries in devel
packages took place here:
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-maintainers/2005-July/msg00061.html
Then the decision has appeared: to strongly recommend to exclude static
libraries from the devel packages, except for cases when it seems
impossible for some reasons.
It was specified in PackagingGuidelines
<http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/PackagingGuidelines#head-e3f33b737a91aa22385d1cb155bb8d611558ae22>
, since 26.07.2005
After that, the majority of new packages should appear without static
libraries. Either contributor himself or reviewer should block attempts
to leave *.a files in the devel packages. Developers of already added
packages should gradually update them, having excluded static libs.
But actually all is differently. There are many packages since the
summer, which have been included in FE with preserved static libraries.
Many packages included earlier have undergone changes recently (i.e.
maintainer have changed something in spec file), however static
libraries have not been removed.
The statistics are here:
- 235 packages in FE have "devel" subpackage
- 149 (63%) still included static libs,
from them 72 (48%, or 31% against all) was modified somehow since the
policy change, but static libs are still present.
This statistics as well as the discussion which has arisen after my
initial message, testifies that people either did not hear about
changes, or disagree with them.
This situation creates a precedent: there is a policy, but significant
part of maintainers ignore it. Is it allowed (i.e. some kind of
liberalism in Fedora) or is it bad (makes an anarchy)?
Dmitry Butskoy
P.S.
Certainly there are some packages which should have static libs (for
example "glibc" as basic thing, "mozilla-nspr" as can be linked only
statically, etc). But these are more exception than normal, and the
number of such packages is about one ten per whole Fedora (IMHO).
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