Re: tlug: PJE

["Stephen J. Turnbull" <turnbull@example.com>]

>>>>> "Scott" == Scott Stone <sstone@example.com> writes:

    Scott> On Fri, 21 Aug 1998, Chris Sekiya wrote:

    >> Headers belong in library-devel.  Shared library belongs in
    >> library-(null).  Static library belongs in library-static.
    >> Everything nicely labelled, and none of this
    >> have-to-install-the-static-library-to-get-anything-to-compile
    >> nonsense.

I like this idea.  However, none of the existing package managers can
handle this if pushed just a little bit.  (OK, they can handle it, but 
their users can't.  I haven't looked at Debian APT aka dselect-TNG,
but it's still hot-air-ware, a little more baked than vaporware.)

The problem is that Debian already has 1500+ packages in hamm/main,
300+ in hamm/non-free, 150+ in hamm/config, and dselect is getting
more than a little unwieldy.  I won't even try to compare any of the
RPM managers, they're all worse (sorry, Scott, but you know what I'm
complaining about).

Now, I know some people who are making RPMs of XEmacs packages.
XEmacs already has over 100 Lisp packages.  You could also imagine
breaking up Perl and Python and TeX and the FSF's Emacs etc, etc like
that.  This is just much too big for the DB/presentation capabilities
of current PMSs.

    >> I still don't like it, but I really don't want to get into a
    >> discussion of the merits of using prepackaged binaries (and the
    >> deficiencies of the package managers thereof) versus compiling
    >> one's own.

Too bad, could be amusing and educational ;-)  By the way, don't feel
bad about stealing a march on me.

    Scott> Chris - I know you feel that everyone should 'roll their
    Scott> own', as it were, but if Linux is going to rise up to

I don't think that's what he said.  He is arguing against mixing
distributions (even different versions of the same distribution).
Just like you do:  TL-2.0 (beta, at least) required /usr to be wiped
to be confident that it would work right, at least that's what I
remember you telling me at the time.

It certainly _didn't_ work right for me until I did that ;-)

    Scott> Linux system, then they should go get TurboLinux or Debian
    Scott> or Redhat or one of the other distributions.

I think that's exactly what Chris is recommending; if you need to
extend beyond what your distribution offers, though, don't borrow from 
smeone else (whose maintainers make different assumptions, this has
hosed XEmacs's reference implementation .rpm kits on several
occasions, and from now on they will also be static-linked, just like
all the others xemacs.org provides).

    Scott> BTW, I like your suggestion of library-(null),
    Scott> library-devel, library-static.  it'll take me a while to
    Scott> implement that, though, unless you want to help, Chris :)

If you're going to do that, and they've implemented "recommends" or
"suggests" in RPM, lib(null) should recommend lib-devel, and lib-devel's 
blurb should explain why.

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