Re: [gentoo-dev] Re: Banning modification of pkg-config files

[Markos Chandras]

On 05/10/2014 07:31 AM, Alexandre Rostovtsev wrote:
> On Sat, 2014-05-10 at 13:50 +0800, Ben de Groot wrote:
>> On 10 May 2014 04:34, Markos Chandras <hwoarang@g.o> wrote:
>>> On 05/09/2014 09:32 PM, Tom Wijsman wrote:
>>>> On Fri, 9 May 2014 16:15:58 -0400
>>>> Rich Freeman <rich0@g.o> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> I think fixing upstream is a no-brainer.
>>>>
>>>> It indeed is, this is the goal; you can force them in multiple ways,
>>>> some of which can be found on the Lua bug and previous discussion(s).
>>>>
>>>>> The controversy only exists when upstream refuses to cooperate (which
>>>>> seems to be the case when we're one of six distros patching it).  If
>>>>> there are other situations where we supply our own files please speak
>>>>> up.
>>>>
>>>> Not that I know of; the refusal to cooperate is what this is all about,
>>>> see my last response to hwoarang before this mail for a short summary.
>>>> Though, I think that the Lua maintainers can explain all the details...
>>>>
>>>>> When the only issue is maintainer laziness I could see fixing that in
>>>>> a different way...
>>>>
>>>> It has always been an issue; we could always use more manpower, ...
>>>>
>>>> https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Contributing_to_Gentoo
>>>>
>>>
>>> Well to me it feels that gentoo specific .pc files is a similar problem
>>> to any other patch that affects upstream code in order to make the
>>> package compatible with gentoo. Some people may consider downstream pc
>>> files more dangerous because reverse deps are affected. But really, if
>>> there is no other alternative, we shouldn't be treating this as a
>>> special case. We patch upstream packages all the time after all
>>
>> Exactly. I don't understand why this is an issue at all. Obviously,
>> if upstream does not ship a .pc file or ships a broken one, we try
>> to work with upstream to get it fixed on their end. If they are
>> uncooperative, we fix it on our end.
>
> Adding a pkgconfig file is a bit of a special case. Some distros have a
> habit of renaming and creating .pc files for various libraries.

Isn't this the same thing? If Debian creates/renames upstream pc files,
and you use Debian as a development box, you have the same problem:
Develop software which is not portable across distros.

I have done very limited upstream development myself, but my opinion has
always been that upstream developers who use
Debian/Gentoo/Fedora/$FOOlinux as their dev environment shouldn't care
about distro peculiarities. That's packagers' job, who are responsible
to make the upstream software compatible with each distribution.

 But in
> Gentoo, almost all pkgconfig files come from upstream with minimal
> modification. So a .pc file that is specific to Gentoo is a rare
> exception, and it could cause confusion for users who installed Gentoo
> on their development machine and who wish to develop new portable
> software.

I don't see how this is a bad thing. This actually makes us look good in
the sense that we stick to upstream code as much as possible.

In an ideal world, all distros would be compatible :)


-- 
Regards,
Markos Chandras