Date: Thu, 3 Oct 2002 09:37:36 -0400 From: "Matthew Emmerton" <matt@gsicomp.on.ca> To: "Garance A Drosihn" <drosih@rpi.edu>, "Poul-Henning Kamp" <phk@critter.freebsd.dk> Cc: "Sheldon Hearn" <sheldonh@starjuice.net>, "Marc Recht" <marc@informatik.uni-bremen.de>, "Alexander Langer" <alex@big.endian.de>, <current@FreeBSD.ORG>, <ports@FreeBSD.ORG> Subject: Re: expat2 in the base system? Message-ID: <007f01c26ae2$09b11ab0$1200a8c0@gsicomp.on.ca> References: <3632.1033651189@critter.freebsd.dk>
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> In message <p0511170fb9c130cfa786@[128.113.24.47]>, Garance A Drosihn
writes:
>
> >I think it would be very prudent that any base-system expat have
> >it's own name, even if it's just "expat2fb". I have no opinion
> >on whether that should be the full expat2 or a stripped down
> >functionality, but I think we should make it clear that "this
> >is the expat which the base system needs -- if you do not like
> >this version, then use the appropriate port and don't complain
> >to us about which version we install in the base system".
>
> It sounds to me like this sums it up nicely. The thing about it
> I like is that it does not prevent us from taking the other route
> later on, whereas putting an "official-looking" expat in the tree
> and yanking that later would be a mess.
>
> Any famous last words before the fat lady sings ?
Well, playing the devil's advocate -- isn't this the type of discussion the
preceeded the introduction of Perl into the base system, the introduction of
which created such a mess that we finally took Perl out of the base system
in -CURRENT?
Now I realize that expat is much less complicated than Perl, but have we
fully addressed interoperability concerns? I know that the /usr vs
${LOCALDIR}distinction between the base system and ports fixes most of them,
at least for experienced users.
My biggest concern is the minority of users installing expat2 from
ports/packages and then not being able to figure out how to use it, since
they always get expat1 since /usr/bin comes before /usr/local/bin in $PATH.
I'm sure there will also be issues with autoconf-based ports that don't do
proper version checking of libraries which will pick up static libs /
headers from /usr instead of /usr/local as well.
--
Matt Emmerton
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