[Bug 171314] Review Request: compat-gtkhtml36

[Michael A. Peters]

On Thu, 2005-10-20 at 23:07 -0400, bugzilla at redhat.com wrote:

> 
> ------- Additional Comments From mpeters at mac.com  2005-10-20 23:07 EST -------
> Applications that have not yet ported to gtkhtml-3.8
> I'll respond in more detail on the Extras list.

Backwards compatibility is a pet peeve of mine with fast changing
distributions.

gtkhtml changes with almost every single gnome release, I'm not against
those changes - I believe they are for the better and they make GNOME
and Fedora better products.

However, it breaks software that has not been ported to the new version
of gtkhtml3.

In an ideal world, software would port itself and we would not have to
worry.
Major projects, such as those that are part of Core and many packages in
Extras, have developers who can patch the source for the new version.

Smaller projects (including one I package for Extras) often don't. Some
of them only have a few developers, who are dedicating what time they
have on the development version and fixing code bugs.

When something like a new version of libgtkhtml3 is released, they often
don't port their stable branch because libgtkhtml3 was designed to allow
multiple versions to be installed, so it isn't a problem. If something
like libgtkhtml3 is all that prevents their software from building in a
new GNOME release, then they don't consider their software broken - you
just need the the right libtkhtml3 installed.

With every release of Fedora, you can go to places like
linuxquestions.org and find people asking how to install the older
version of libgtkhtml3 (and sometimes libgal) because something they
like or need won't build against the newer version. Very often they are
told to build it from source, sometimes they are told to switch to
Debian, etc.

If we package it in Extras, then they can yum install it if they need it
- and the previour Core package from which it came can be watched for
security/bugfixes etc. - which often isn't done by users who installed
it from source or installed it from some rpm they found on some random
web page via google.

I'd *love* to see an official Fedora-Compat repository dedicated to
providing libraries that changed from one release to the next, but I
don't think that will happen without major funding to pay for it.
gtkhtml3 though is popular enough of a library that it should, imho, be
available in Extras for those who need it.