Dear Fink developers, Peter O'Gorman and I attended WWDC, and have experimented with Fink on the WWDC preview distributed there. Although we cannot comment on any specifics, it appears that the impact of the transition to 10.4 on Fink will be less severe than the previous transitions. It is, however, too early to make a final statement along these lines, since the preview we got this year is in much less final form than the previews from the past two releases. So things could change later.
The question arises, then: should we have a separate 10.4 tree, and if so, when should we start to work on it? I believe that we will indeed want to create a separate 10.4 tree, but that there will be virtually no changes needed in packages between the 10.3 and 10.4 trees. However, we will probably want to make changes in the way fink builds things, and -- unless we want to manually go through and change revision numbers in packages -- this is the best way to do that. We preserve our philosophy of "any machine you build it on produces the same result for the same package", as long as it is recognized that "same package" refers not only to the version number, but also to the tree. If I am right, and virtually no changes will be needed in packages, then we should wait until the last possible minute to create the 10.4 tree. At that time, we can copy over the 10.3 tree to 10.4 (possibly with some automatically-made changes in packages). The later we wait, the easier it will be to keep the trees in sync and up to date. What sort of changes might we make in fink for 10.4? (1) There is a good chance that we'll want to change our prebinding strategy, (2) we'll probably want to build with MACOSX_DEPLOYMENT_TARGET set to 10.4, and (3) we can implement which didn't get done in 10.3: a new policy that all packages must explicitly state their dependencies on essential packages. (More about this below.) I hope we can find a way to set up a private mailing list for use by those of us who have ADC Software Seed Keys, to discuss further issues about 10.4 as they arise. -- Dave P.S. Why explicitly state dependencies on essential packages? This is the only way to have an upgrade strategy for our essential packages. For example, gettext has been upgraded with a library compatibility change, so eventually we want to replace gettext with gettext2. During the transition, though, gettext-shlibs dependencies will need to be explicitly stated. How to do this? We can automatically add dependencies on all essential packages during the copying from the 10.3 to 10.4 trees. Then, as time goes on, developers will be free to remove those dependencies when they revise their packages, if the dependencies are not actually needed. ------------------------------------------------------- This SF.Net email sponsored by Black Hat Briefings & Training. Attend Black Hat Briefings & Training, Las Vegas July 24-29 - digital self defense, top technical experts, no vendor pitches, unmatched networking opportunities. Visit www.blackhat.com _______________________________________________ Fink-devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/fink-devel
