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

[Peter Stuge]

Rich Freeman wrote:
> > Longterm, this makes it year after year more difficult to develop
> > software for "Linux".
>
> I'm with you here, but what is the solution?
>
> If we say we stick to upstream then we don't provide pkg-config files
> at all (in these cases).

I think this is a sane default.


> Then when Debian does the other upstreams use them and then those
> packages break on Gentoo.

I like Gentoo to stay very close to upstream.

If upstream pkg A depends on $distro-specific foo of pkg B then that
will obviously not work in an environment only following upstreams,
and will require effort to untie gentoo pkg A from $distro specifics.

As has been said, that's ultimately a portability problem of A, which
becomes the maintainer's problem when creating gentoo pkg A.

This will mean that some unportable upstreams cannot be packaged for
Gentoo without fixing their bugs first. If they don't consider this a
bug then they are making a bad decision and sadly the Gentoo
maintainer sortof has to live with that. :\

I don't think it's fair to force a Gentoo maintainer to do any
specific thing here. If a Gentoo maintainer is willing to untie
unhelpful upstreams from their own bugs for the benefit of Gentoo
then that's fantastic, even if upstreams don't understand so.

But I don't think it's reasonable to *require* from Gentoo maintainers.

If I were looking at a bug which asks to create an ebuild from an
upstream which has a $distro-specific bugtie then I might as well
close it as WONTFIX as long as the upstream don't fix their problem.

But I would equally welcome anyone else to reopen the Gentoo bug if
they had untied the bugtie.


//Peter