[Fedora-packaging] Clarification of Static Libraries packaging guidelines

Patrice Dumas pertusus at free.fr
Sat Dec 5 18:00:50 UTC 2009


On Sat, Dec 05, 2009 at 06:19:41PM +0100, Michael Schwendt wrote:
> $ yum list \*-static | wc -l
> 115
> $ yum list \*-devel-static | wc -l
> 8
> $ yum list \*-static | grep -v devel | wc -l
> 108
> 
> Perhaps I only have a nit-picky day, but
> 
>   https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Packaging:Guidelines#Packaging_Static_Libraries
> 
> clearly mentions  *-static  as in foo-static - and not foo-devel-static.
> Could this part of the guidelines be clarified, please?

There should be no foo-devel-static. But I am not sure that there is a need
to change the guideline since it doesn't mention the devel-static 
possibility.

At some point this was unclear and some devel-static packages were done,
but hopefully this is a thing from the past.

> Related to this ambiguity in the naming guidelines, it's kind of pointless
> if some packages start creating -static subpackages, which provide a
> virtual -devel *and* a virtual -devel-static package in addition to a

This should never be the case. Fist there should not be any -devel-static 
package, and second the -static package should not provide a virtual -devel 
if there are shared libraries.

But once again, I think that the guidelines are clear on that subject:
#  Static libraries and shared libraries. In this case, the static libraries must be placed in a *-static subpackage. Separating the static libraries from the other development files in *-devel allow us to track this usage by checking which packages BuildRequire the *-static package. The intent is that whenever possible, packages will move away from using these static libraries, to the shared libraries. 

--
Pat




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