[Fedora-packaging] Re: paragraph on shipping static numerical libs

[Patrice Dumas]

On Mon, May 28, 2007 at 11:18:43PM -0400, Bill Nottingham wrote:
> 
> They aren't useful *in general*. It's supporting an outmoded, inefficient
> mode of use (shuffling libraries and binaries around between machines and
> OSes), and it's no different than various other outmoded, inefficient,
> past UNIX-isms. 

It is efficient, but not general. What we are asking is to let the
possibility to the user to do this use when it makes sense.

> We don't support every app parsing the password file
> (or more) - we support authenticating via PAM. We don't support making

But you still havent replaced /etc/passwd with something that couldn't
be parsed by the user.

> cdrecord setuid - we support fixing the kernel to DTRT. We don't

But people can still set the setuid bit.

> encourage logging in as root to do all tasks - we support consolehelper,

Still it is possible to log in as root if one wants.

> and moving to things like consolekit and separated helpers from their
> UI frontends. We don't support creating specific groups to own devices -
> we support pam_console and then ACLs added via ConsoleKit.

Once again a user can use groups to own devices by changing
configuration (at least I hope so...). Regarding the use of Consolekit
it is too new to me to have an advice. 

The fact that it isn't supported doesn't mean that it should be 
prevented. At least I hope that's not what you do with RHEL customers 
(and I guess that you cannot legally). Of course the support could be
void in those cases.

> We don't support every single usage case that people want in Fedora -
> it's about trying to solve the problems in the right ways that scale
> going forward.

So what is 'the right ways that scale going forward' for that issue?
Once again it is not about linking statically in fedora, but about
letting this possibility to the user, especially in cases when it could
be usefull -- you don't have to support the user doing this. I hope 
that shipping something in RHEL doesn't mean that you support every 
use of that piece of code.

--
Pat