On Wed, 2007-02-28 at 19:16 +0100, Fryderyk Dziarmagowski wrote: > --- Alexander Larsson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > On Tue, 2007-02-27 at 17:54 +0100, Fryderyk Dziarmagowski wrote: > > > --- Bastien Nocera <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > > > > No, it isn't only a run-time dep, or at least shouldn't be. The > > > > gnome-mime-data doesn't have to be in the same place as the libraries > > > > you're installing, and gnome-vfs should still be able to find the files. > > > > > > You can safely remove PKG check from configure and build g-vfs without > > > smallest problems. You can even run all major GNOME apps without it. > > > Forcing people to use something that is not needed it's IMO wrong. > > > > You can do all sorts of shit manually if you want. That doesn't change a > > single thing. We enforce backwards compatibility. > > Enforcing backward compatibility at build time? What compatibility is > that? It's broken idea. > > > Maybe some third party app still use the gnome-vfs APIs that use the old > > mime data. We don't just break it to save a few bytes. > > Right. And in such case third party app should depend on > gnome-mime-data. Such app should force you to install it, because it > can't run without it.
How exactly is an existing package supposed to start having a dependency it never had before? The point of backwards compatibility is to be compatible with existing programs, not new ones. Take a fictitious program, Beanstalk. Beanstalk 1.2 was released in July of 2005. It used gnome-vfs and relied on features that only work with gnome-mime-data. When it was released, gnome-mime-data was a requirement of gnome-vfs, and those features worked. There was no reason for the Beanstalk developers to make version 1.2 require gnome-mime-data. Now, with the upcoming 2.4 release, they can certainly introduce a gnome-mime-data dependency, if they still use those particular features. But they can't magically change the requirements of the 1.2 packages that people are still installing and using. People don't always use the latest versions of their programs. Heck, sometimes people use programs that aren't even being updated anymore. The whole point of backwards compatibility is to make that possible. -- Shaun _______________________________________________ desktop-devel-list mailing list [email protected] http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/desktop-devel-list
