+++ Ralf Corsepius [2015-09-04 17:38 +0200]: > On 09/04/2015 02:26 PM, Sébastien Hinderer wrote: > > >Eric Blake (2015/09/04 06:07 -0600): > >>On 09/03/2015 08:09 AM, Sébastien Hinderer wrote: > >>>Dear all, > >>> > >>>I am one of the maintainers of Coccinelle[1], a tool written in the > >>>Objective Caml[2] language. > >>> > >>>The tool is distributed with the libraries it depends on (they are > >>>provided as bundles). > > >Camllanguage and its libraries are not as widespread as gettext and > >libtool. So the idea of the bundles is tomake life of end-users simpler, > >but of course it also makes thelifeofdevelopers and maintainers a bit > >harder. > > Well, what I can tell you with my Fedora on is that in Fedora we > discourage bundling, because it in a nutshell raises a lot problems > in maintenance, both for system-integrators (read: distros) and > upstreams.
Right. Debian requires software not to use embedded libraries (unless they are genuinely exclusive to the package) if at all possible. Bundling libraries is bad for security (the bundled versions don't get updated when an issue is found in the system version), it wastes memory (unless versions are identical) and space, and conversely using system libs encourages proper upstreaming (over random forking and hackery), and API stabilty/management. It's acceptable to leave such libs in the source if that's how upstream ships it, but not to use them in the build. They are sometimes removed from the source too in the packaging process. Packaging (and build-systems like autotools) provides the same functionality from the user/developer POV, of having all the build-dependencies easily available at build-time. Distro-people believe this is superior to every upstream trying to do it with their own random-version, maybe-forked embedded copy :-) Wookey -- Principal hats: Linaro, Debian, Wookware, ARM http://wookware.org/ _______________________________________________ Autoconf mailing list Autoconf@gnu.org https://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/autoconf
