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

[Alexandre Rostovtsev]

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. 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.

Of course, in the case of Lua, it seems that all other distros are
already providing .pc files, so joining them would seem to be the
correct thing to do (we would simply be recognizing a de facto
standard).