On Thu, Mar 13, 2008 at 04:19:46PM -0700, Mike Shapiro wrote: > On Fri, Mar 14, 2008 at 12:07:17AM +0100, Joerg Schilling wrote: > > If you don't know, such a library already exists since August 1986, so why > > should there be another one. > > Solaris is allowed to have whatever namespace of whatever pieces of software > we all choose. The ARC's job is to own that namespace and approve changes. > There is no common library with this name in Solaris. This case adds one.
Well... While working on the SQLite3 integration into SFW Mike Sullivan requested that a heads up be sent to the w-team just in case there are library name conflicts elsewhere. Mike (Sullivan) went so far as to assert that we should do this when we add any libraries where other software might pick it up. It's not enough to install the WOS and see that there's not conflict because auto-configured items in, say, SFW, might incorrectly think that your new library is something they should use. I'm not sure how likely that is though. For example, there are two things in SFW (Apache2 modules) that can use SQLite3, but won't use it unless you add --with-sqlite3=... to the ./configure command line. But it's always possible that conflicts of this sort will arise. If we had tighter control over the Solaris library namespace then this might not be an issue, but such control would imply more process for folks integrating new libraries. There's a price to pay either. Finally, if there is a FOSS libscsi that predates ours and their ABIs are different (which, unless we're doing a re-write, they will be) then it would probably be better to avoid the conflict. The problem with this is that having to search freshmeat.net, sourceforge, etc..., gauge popularity/deployment of any conflicts found, and so on means that the Solaris library namespace has exploded and there is no more control. Which brings me to the frightening possibility that anyone integrating a new library into /usr/lib in Solaris would have to build and test *all* the Solaris consolidations. Yes, Mike (Sullivan) almost went as far as requiring that I do just that, but settled on requiring that I build SFWNV and ONNV and send a heads up to the w-team and the JDS team. I would rather we avoid such a namespace explosion, but I'm not sure we can, in the long-term anyways. Nico --
