[Fedora-packaging] Re: Use of Internal Libraries

[Dominik 'Rathann' Mierzejewski]

On Friday, 19 September 2008 at 09:34, Axel Thimm wrote:
> On Fri, Sep 19, 2008 at 01:41:50AM +1200, Nigel Jones wrote:
> > So I know we have
> > http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Packaging/Guidelines#Duplication_of_system_libraries
> > which I think is pretty good, easy to understand and fairly simple.
> > 
> > The problem I think is that some upstream's still want to ship
> > internal, modified libraries.
> 
> > Upstream says "it's a guideline not a rule".
> > 
> > _MY_ question is, what can we (Fedora) do to make it clear that we have
> > clear cut rules for why we don't want packages providing internal
> > libraries?
[...]
> Just to quote one such example: ffmpeg is a fast moving target, and
> any project depending on the lib API is cutting a checkout, patching
> it a up and using it for its own purposes. Replacing these internal
> ffmpegs with a system ffmpeg is a nightmare or even impossible w/o
> rewriting the app interface to it. Given that ffmpeg and friends fall
> under the patent forbidden class we don't see that directly in Fedora,
> but this issue is still out there.

I don't know if you've been following FFmpeg development lately, but
they have improved over the last year or so to the point that no ABI
breakage occurs without bumping the major version of the affected
library. The pkg-config support is put properly in place, too, so if you
haven't done that already, it's high time to begin convincing depdendent
projects to start supporting shared FFmpeg. I've already begun working
on fixing the main consumer of FFmpeg, MPlayer, to do that.

Regards,
R.

-- 
Fedora http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/User:Rathann
Livna http://rpm.livna.org | MPlayer http://mplayerhq.hu
"Faith manages."
        -- Delenn to Lennier in Babylon 5:"Confessions and Lamentations"