Re: Proposal to (formally/easily) allowing multiple versions of the same library installable

Hedayat Vatankhah <hedayat.fwd@xxxxxxxxx> · Fri, 20 Feb 2015 11:35:13 +0330



      Ralf Corsepius <rc040203@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote
      on Mon, 16 Feb 2015 17:17:32 +0100:
    On
      02/16/2015 05:10 PM, Martyn Foster wrote:
      

        On 16 February 2015 at 15:12, Kevin Kofler
        <kevin.kofler@xxxxxxxxx
        

        <mailto:kevin.kofler@xxxxxxxxx>> wrote:
        

            Christopher Meng wrote:
        

            > Maintaining several version of the same library is not
        easy as you think,
        

            > basically once a developer wants to install version X
        while then another
        

            > people want to deploy things based on version Y, how to
        crack this nut?
        

            > You can't just care about runtime.
        

            Then you need to patch one or the other package to work with
        the same
        

            version. Only if that is not possible, a compatibility
        library can be
        

            considered. But we should always first try to make
        everything work
        

            with the
        

            same version (if possible, the newer one).
        

        The requirement to work with multiple versions of a package come
        up in
        

        the scientific/HPC community very frequently. Its not always
        about API
        

        compatibility, sometimes exact numerical reproduction is
        required which
        

        isn't preserved even between minor versions (i.e. an OS update).
        

      I don't buy this argument wrt. Fedora.
      

      Fedora is a rapid moving, forward looking distro, in which such
      regressions should be fixed and not be worked around by
      compat-libs.
      

      Ralf
      

    I guess the main point is missed completely. The main proposal is
    not mainly about compatibility. It's about providing latest
    development libraries in stable releases for *user* consumption (not
    for distro one). Also, the compatibility package is solely provided
    for user consumption; *no* Fedora package should be built against it
    (unless it happens already).

    
    There are some arguments against providing such thing in Fedora, but
    if someone wants to install two versions of the same library (e.g.
    installing the latest version for development while having default
    version for Fedora packages); he'll do it anyway. So, if such
    packages are not provided by Fedora, he will install from source.
    So, the user will install multiple versions anyway. Do you want to
    support him, or not?

    
    Regards,

    Hedayat

  
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