Re: autocon and sub-packages

[Wookey]

+++ Ralf Corsepius [2015-09-04 17:38 +0200]:
> On 09/04/2015 02:26 PM, Sébastien Hinderer wrote:
> 
> >Eric Blake (2015/09/04 06:07 -0600):
> >>On 09/03/2015 08:09 AM, Sébastien Hinderer wrote:
> >>>Dear all,
> >>>
> >>>I am one of the maintainers of Coccinelle[1], a tool written in the
> >>>Objective Caml[2] language.
> >>>
> >>>The tool is distributed with the libraries it depends on (they are
> >>>provided as bundles).
> 
> >Camllanguage and its libraries are not as widespread as gettext and
> >libtool. So the idea of the bundles is tomake life of end-users simpler,
> >but of course it also makes thelifeofdevelopers and maintainers a bit
> >harder.
> 
> Well, what I can tell you with my Fedora on is that in Fedora we
> discourage bundling, because it in a nutshell raises a lot problems
> in maintenance, both for system-integrators (read: distros) and
> upstreams.

Right. Debian requires software not to use embedded libraries (unless
they are genuinely exclusive to the package) if at all possible.
Bundling libraries is bad for security (the bundled versions don't get
updated when an issue is found in the system version), it wastes
memory (unless versions are identical) and space, and conversely using
system libs encourages proper upstreaming (over random forking and
hackery), and API stabilty/management.

It's acceptable to leave such libs in the source if that's how
upstream ships it, but not to use them in the build. They are sometimes
removed from the source too in the packaging process.

Packaging (and build-systems like autotools) provides the same
functionality from the user/developer POV, of having all the
build-dependencies easily available at build-time. Distro-people
believe this is superior to every upstream trying to do it with their
own random-version, maybe-forked embedded copy :-)

Wookey
-- 
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http://wookware.org/