| 1 |
Gregory M. Turner posted on Fri, 31 Aug 2012 16:13:20 -0700 as excerpted: |
| 2 |
|
| 3 |
> For the record, I'm not saying we need to put pkgconfig in - I'm totally |
| 4 |
> agnostic about that, as I am about whether it should be brought in as a |
| 5 |
> dependency. |
| 6 |
|
| 7 |
[Just replying here as it's handy.] |
| 8 |
|
| 9 |
I don't believe the following bit has been explicitly stated yet. I'm |
| 10 |
not sure if it's sufficiently implicit that it doesn't need stated for |
| 11 |
not, but in case it helps: |
| 12 |
|
| 13 |
The effect of adding pkgconfig to @system is just this: Currently, we |
| 14 |
have an explicit list of all packages that need it (barring missing |
| 15 |
dependency bugs, of course). If it gets added to @system, that list |
| 16 |
immediately gets decimated, and while its historical value can always be |
| 17 |
dug out of the VCS (as long as the git upgrade or whatever doesn't lose |
| 18 |
that information, anyway), it's no longer being updated and will quickly |
| 19 |
go stale, so when the time comes and we DO decide to finally seriously |
| 20 |
tackle @system removal, that's one more dependency that we have to go to |
| 21 |
(excuse the shouting) ALL THE WORK OF RECREATING THE DATA WE CURRENTLY |
| 22 |
HAVE, ALL OVER AGAIN. |
| 23 |
|
| 24 |
We have that data for pkgconfig now, and currently, it must be maintained |
| 25 |
in at least a semi-reasonable state. If we ever DO get serious about |
| 26 |
@system removal, we'll definitely need that data. So let's not go |
| 27 |
voluntarily dumping it down the toilet, which is what adding pkgconfig to |
| 28 |
@system would amount to, only to decide we actually need that data after |
| 29 |
all, but by then it'll be gone, so we'll have to recreate it from |
| 30 |
scratch. That's what all this is about, not adding yet another package |
| 31 |
to the list of packages we don't HAVE proper dependency data for, data |
| 32 |
that we'll have to create from scratch if we ever do decide to move on |
| 33 |
the @system removal thing, when for this package at least, we already HAD |
| 34 |
it, and will have deliberately thrown it away by adding the package to |
| 35 |
@system. |
| 36 |
|
| 37 |
|
| 38 |
If it was as simple as just adding it to the list, and we weren't |
| 39 |
throwing away a quite valuable bunch of already accumulated dependency |
| 40 |
data as a result, sure, no problem, go right ahead. Unfortunately... |
| 41 |
|
| 42 |
-- |
| 43 |
Duncan - List replies preferred. No HTML msgs. |
| 44 |
"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master -- |
| 45 |
and if you use the program, he is your master." Richard Stallman |
Archives