meego-dev-boun...@meego.com wrote: > The subject of how the "MeeGo API" is defined came up in the TSG > yesterday, and against my better judgement I managed to inject myself > into a discussion about standards. > > The way it's currently phrased, the MeeGo API is a very limited set of > libraries (Qt, QtMobility and GLES, plus the web framework). > Everything else is reserved for the "Platform API", which carries no > promise of future availability. > > I made the point that a literal reading here would make applications > that link against the POSIX.1 symbols noncompliant. The answer came > back that glibc was an "obvious" candidate for the MeeGo API, and > didn't need to be specified. And for the C library I suppose that's > true. > > But I think the issue is a more complicated spectrum than that. What > about other useful APIs that are "always" present for a Qt app on > linux? Is an app directly linking to zlib compliant (I don't think Qt > wraps this)? How about libjpeg (which is abstracted by the > framework)? What about an app which executes a shell script; can we > assume a /bin/sh (or /bin/bash) will be present? What about a shell > script that invokes tar or bzip2? > > I can understand the need for excluding a bunch of low level facilities > that may be deprecated in the future, and limiting what constitutes > "MeeGo" for forward-portable applications. But the way it's done > right now rules out a lot of stuff that I don't think was intended. > > Is it worth going through the core package list more carefully and > expanding the MeeGo API definition?
I expect you'll get divided opinions on that, let's see what the reactions are. For me, we should identify stuff that's truly useful, and stable, and promote it to "first class" status. But I think there is a constituency that believes "program to Qt and as an emergency exception if Qt doesn't wrap that yet there are a few other things you maybe could use - for now". And yes, you're allowed a shell script; tar/bzip2 don't appear to be in the package list (bzip2-libs is) though. _______________________________________________ MeeGo-dev mailing list MeeGo-dev@meego.com http://lists.meego.com/listinfo/meego-dev
