Hello !
For some reason, I missed this mail ;-)...
On 04/11/11 17:33, Jim Procter wrote:
> Jalview is now patched for Jmol 12.2.4 - which is their latest SVN for
> 12.2 branch.
Great !
An updated version of jalview is currently on its way to unstable...
> On 04/11/2011 11:30, Vincent Fourmond wrote:
>>
>> Actually, that isn't the case. If you think in terms of distribution
>> (say, squeeze, wheezy, I don't know if that actually tells anything to
>> all of you)
>> It is possible to duplicate code and have, say, a jmol-12.1 package
>> and a jmol-12.2 package, but that's a real pain to maintain, and the
>> Debian Security frowns upon that: two times the same code means
>> potentially having to fix security issues twice (keep in mind Debian
>> provides security support for all of its packages). Basically, this is
>> accepted as a transition to avoid breaking too many things at once,
>> but very seldom in a durable fashion.
> hmm. there are situations where this does have to happen. We expect
> Jalview to enter such a transition phase in a few months, because I will
> begin cutting up the code into distinct modules, each with their own
> versioned API. At the same time, we'll maintain the last release branch,
> backporting patches if possible, until Jalview 3 is stable and we can
> completely deprecate the 2.X series. I'd almost bet money that people
> will still use Jalview 2.X for a few years after that, though!
There's no problem with a transition between two different
architectures of jalview, especially since, for now at least, no other
debian packages depend on it. It's just that maintaining over a long
period two versions concurrently means double work, which may as well be
justified !
Debian doesn't prevent users from installing older versions of
packages. As a matter of fact, snapshot.debian.org enables one to find
any version of a package that ever made it to the archive (excepted
those that should never have been there due to copyright/license
issues). It's just that if it doesn't work out of the box, you're on
your own.
>> That makes it particularly painfull to package Java stuff, as there
>> are so many tools that make it easy for a java developer to use a
>> particular version of a library that in general developers are a
>> little less careful about API breakages.
> I don't think that's limited to Java developers ! but that's a story for
> another list ;)
Java is one of the very few languages that allows for an easy
redistribution of binary-only cross-platform code. This is what makes it
easy to pick an already compiled library and stick to it. This is what
makes it a pain to package ;-)...
>> I don't know what could be a long-term solution. If this time, jmol
>> underwent heavy refactoring, API breakages are normal. I hope that
>> won't happen that often for later versions of jmol. Maybe just raising
>> the awareness there about which interfaces you use would encourage
>> jmol developers to stabilize them ?
> I have done, and continued to do this.
Great !
> Furthermore, I'll barrack for a
> Jmol-apis package to be created (since I want to make an analogous
> Jalview-apis package too :) ).
... and great too !
>> Probably you don't use too much of
>> jmol's internals to make it a pain for jmol developers to keep the
>> interface you use constant. Think about it: this means that jmol
>> upgrades for you would be mostly painless, and that also means that
>> jalview users would have an up-to-date embedded copy of jmol...
> Don't I know it ! However, since Jmol's architecture is still undergoing
> massive changes, I don't think we'll see a simple drop-in upgrade path
> between major versions (ie 12.x transitions) for some time. It was just
> bad luck that the 12.2 series came out just as you released Jalview's
> package :) hopefully we can time it better next time.
;-)...
Cheers, and thanks for the quick patches !
Vincent
--
Vincent Fourmond, Doctor in Physics
http://vince-debian.blogspot.com/
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