compat packages

[Paul Howarth]

On Tue, 2006-04-25 at 10:34 -0700, Michael A. Peters wrote:
> I've got some questions about compatibility packages, and whether they
> are in the scope of Fedora Extras when nothing in Extras needs them.
> 
> Obviously if a compat package is needed to build/run something in
> extras, it belongs in Extras for repo-closure (unless it is in core).
> 
> The gstreamer08 packages are an example.
> 
> A bugzilla I have open now is for the fc4 (gnome 2.10) version of
> gtkhtml3. When I opened it, an upstream package I maintained did not
> work with gnome 2.12 or newer. Then it worked, but was quite buggy.
> 
> Finally (after testing on my own machine for a few days, it just went
> through the build system for fc5) upstream has a new version that as far
> as I can tell, works just as well as the older version that was coded
> for gnome 2.10.
> 
> But I'm still willing to maintain the 3.6.x version of gtkhtml3 simply
> because I think Fedora needs to be more backwards compatible when it
> comes to shared libraries, especially since the official line now is to
> discourage static linking to the point where static libraries are not
> wanted in our packages.
> 
> Every update of gnome - someone on some list or forum has problems
> because libgtkhtml changed its shared library, and I think that when
> possible (no file conflicts and someone is willing to maintain them),
> compat versions should be readily available.
> 
> But do they belong in Extras if nothing in extras uses them, or should I
> maybe subscribe to yet another list (Fedora Legacy) and see if maybe
> some other people there want to make a "legacy library" repo for current
> versions of Fedora?
> 
> Backwards compatibility is important to me, and I'm sure I'm not the
> only one. When things are built against shared libraries which is the
> better way to do it, backwards compatibility can only be obtained if the
> older shared libraries are easily available from *somewhere*. But if the
> consensus is that they shouldn't be in Extras unless needed by an Extras
> package, I'm willing to campaign for a repo elsewhere. I'd just like to
> know how people here feel about it.

I think Extras is exactly the right place for them actually. They're not
"Core" but many people would find them useful to have available. I still
get lots of hits on the libcurl7112 package (for libcurl.so.2) in my
personal repo, which might be a useful addition to Extras.

Not sure about having devel subpackages of compat libraries though.

Paul.