proposal to remove static libs from -devel packages for FC5

[Christopher Aillon]

Ralf Corsepius wrote:
> On Wed, 2005-07-27 at 13:16 +0900, Jens Petersen wrote:
> 
>>Christopher Aillon wrote:
>>
>>>Let's get rid of static libs where we can.  But there's no need to force
>>>people to move things around in packages.  Firefox, Mozilla,
>>>Thunderbird, etc. ABSOLUTELY CANNOT BUILD without the static lib of
>>>nspr.  Sure, that is a bug that is worth fixing, however, moving the
>>>static lib out of nspr-devel currently makes nspr-devel USELESS, so I
>>>see no point in doing this if people will need to install the -static
>>>package anyway to make use of the -devel package.
>>
>>Ok, sure there will have to be exceptions and nspr will be one of them. :)
> 
> Why? Ship a nspr-static instead of nspr-devel.


Act I, Scene I
(Tim is sitting, drinking a latte at Starbucks. He using their access point with his laptop.)
Tim: Hmm.  I want to create an application using nspr.  I think I'll go find nspr-devel.
(Tim typing.)
Tim: WTF?  IT DOESNT EXIST?!?!?!  
(Tim sighs.)
Tim: Wow, such defeat.  Tom shall never let me hear the end of it.
(Tim files a bug report.)

Act I, Scene II
Todd: Seriously.  I saw the bugmail.  Let me show you.
(Tom looks over as Todd produces the aforementioned bugmail.)
Tom: (laughing) Man, I knew he didn't have it in him.
Tom: (aside) That silly Tim, creating his own applications.  Everyone knows the real glory is hacking firefox.  But first, I need the nspr devel env.  Little does he know that to alleviate Tim's issues, the RPM maintainer just built a new nspr package without the evil static libs.  nspr-devel now exists and has just the headers.  I'll grab it quickly and be one step ahead of him!
(Tom goes to his laptop and successfully wgets the RPM)

Act I, Scene III
WTF?  FIREFOX DOESNT BUILD WITH IT?  Same with mozilla, thunderbird, and subsequently evolution, etc.  Noooooooooooooooooooooooo!

Act II, Scene I
Tim and Tom are discussing how well their progress is going.
...

Act III, Scene IV
...
Both frustrated, and not willing to admit defeat to the other, they end up tragically killing themselves.

THE END.


Obviously, in both cases we disservice the developer.  The real solution is to fix things to not require the static libs, and just simply remove them, not to hack around it by adding -static packages.  That just causes confusion.


(Yes, it is late here.  I'm bored waiting for laundry to finish.)