On 04/11/2012 12:27 PM, David C. Rankin wrote:
On 04/11/2012 10:37 AM, /dev/ammo42 wrote:
Guns don't kill people, people kill people.
Concerning libpng it's the same thing: libpng doesn't break
compatibility, distributions break compatibility.
For example, libpng 1.0 was evicted from Slackware at version 9.0
(March 2003) but is still in Fedora 16 (the latest). And libpng 1.0 is
still maintained upstream BTW.
Excellent example.
Especially libpng. I don't know why arch couldn't maintain a libpng12,
libpng14 and libpng15. The maintenance of the older packages is 'zip' and would
have continued to provide needed soname report for older programs without
forcing a rebuild of everything that relied on libpng.
Because arch packagers only maintain what upstream provides. If you want
older versions look in the AUR. This for me is a good reason to use
Arch. when a program is released, a new version. I want it right away. I
am not going to sit around for a year to get a new version. New versions
mean improvements and fixes, and so a core library like libpng? you bet
i want that new version, since large parts of my system relies on it!
The downside to continue to provide the earlier
versions is it provides no
motivation for brining code current. "Why go to the trouble of updating code for
libpng15 if you can just install an older libpng and move on?" Human nature
shows there is little chance of motiving code updates in that circumstance.
So yes, there will be a bit of pain to update for gcc47, libpng15, etc..., but
in the end, TDE is current, builds on current libs, is much less time consuming
to maintain (incompatibility from old code always surfaces), and it make TDE
that much more likely to be picked up, packaged and maintained by the distros as
an alternative desktop.
It's a cup 1/2 empty or cup 1/2 full thing to me.