On Sat, Mar 09, 2013 at 05:50:31AM +0100, Luca Barbato <lu_z...@gentoo.org>
wrote:
> > If "you" are gentoo and you add patches like that, potentially breaking
> > compatibility with other distributions and upstream, then you are simply
> > doing it wrong.
>
> Feel free to discuss about it here
Why would I? It's not my job to educate gentoo. They can break programs
and make life harder for its users as much as they want.
Does that mean I have to be quiet or applaud when they do stupid things?
Clearly not.
> > Note that fedora plans to remeove the pkg-config file because it doesn't
> > really improve anything (and they have an ethical upstream policy).
>
> You seem to picture Gentoo as some sort of evil entity.
I don't seem to do anything like that, and this kind of reaction after I
just pointed out that this patch creates issues for another distribution
is disingenuous.
Now, if gentoo really has an unethical policy of allowing it's maintainers
to patch programs without any need, then it's a really just a bad
distribution. They will have to sort it out eventually.
However, more likely, this is just another case of a clueless maintainer -
probably knowledgable about how to package something for a distribution,
but clueless about programming in general, and libev specifically.
Some distributions have a responsible policy about such upstream patches,
fedora for example.
Take, for example, debian, which has a long track record of maintainers
who think they "know better" applying patches they don't understand,
resulting in lots of bugs and exploits (openssl and cron just being two
examples).
I am extremely wary of package maintainers that apply random patches
to programs when they clearly don't understand the long-term
effects. Especially when doing it without even a disucssion with upstream.
Just say no to these irresponsible maintainers.
> I just checked why it had been patched in (importing Fedora patch mind
> you) and it was because libverto requires it.
And this is a good example on why the policy violation of the previous
fedora libev maintainer causes problems now.
If gentoo wants to fork libev or any other library, then it really should
rename it. If it doesn't want to fork, then it should not apply random
patches floating around the net.
> Would be nice if you provide a pkg-config since it makes the life of
> those having to check for libraries much easier.
This is an unfounded claim. Repeating it will not make it true.
> In order to get the same features I had to rely on non-standard
> AX_CHECK_LIBRARY and luckily I'm not using alternative build systems.
I am sorry, but I think you are making this up. If you disagree, please
explain why you _had_ to rely on "non-standard AX_CHECK_LIBRARY".
You can specify the nonstandard location of libev to a configure script
that doesn't even mention libev in any way, and it will just work. That's
zero overhead.
> So for the normal autotool situation you spare lines in your configure,
> have a clear and clean way to override the library and headers paths
> with the right granularity and if you have a decent cross environment
> and a decent pkg-config your life gets quite simpler.
Exactly, in the normal case, this is true. pkg-config would not help here
at all, it would only increase the complexity of the configure script.
--
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----==-- _ generation
---==---(_)__ __ ____ __ Marc Lehmann
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