[Fedora-packaging] Re: Use of Internal Libraries

Dominik 'Rathann' Mierzejewski dominik at greysector.net
Fri Sep 19 17:55:38 UTC 2008


On Friday, 19 September 2008 at 18:58, Axel Thimm wrote:
> On Fri, Sep 19, 2008 at 02:56:25PM +0200, Dominik 'Rathann' Mierzejewski wrote:
> > 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
> 
> Note I mentioned the API, which is still changing on a regular
> basis. For ffmpeg it doesn't actually help that there are no releases
> ever either.

API is not changing on a regular basis either. If there are incompatible
changes, they are accompanied by a major version bump.

> > 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.
> 
> Unless ffmpeg actually releases anything again I doubt that too many
> projects will try to depend on an external shared lib whose API
> stability window is a few weeks.

Actually most of what we have in livna/rpmfusion does work with external
shared libs. And the API stability window is rather closer to 3 years.

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"




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