[Mageia-dev] Lib policy change needed ?

[Ahmad Samir]

On 15 June 2011 10:44, Christiaan Welvaart <cjw at daneel.dyndns.org> wrote:
> On Wed, 15 Jun 2011, Dexter Morgan wrote:
>
>> the last BS breakage makes me thing that we should adjust our
>> packaging policy and add only one lib per lib package.
>>
>>
>> On our last BS breakage we had as error :
>>
>>
>> A requested package cannot be installed:
>> seahorse-2.32.0-2.mga1.x86_64 (due to unsatisfied libgp11.so.0()(64bit))
>>
>>
>> because libgp11.so.0 was in libgcr0 but disappeared.
>
> This was of course a packaging error, the version postfix in the package
> name should have been modified.
>
>> WDYT about this new policy ?
>
> Fine with me, always considered it strange when the lib version in the pkg
> name does not correspond to major version of some of the libraries in a
> package. I agree this policy change or clarification (if followed) will
> likely prevent such mistakes in the future. And it should not cause any
> problems since we have automatic library provides and dependencies.
>
>
>    Christiaan
>

Splitting every single lib in a separate package isn't ideal, IMHO
(just look at how many kde library packages we have).

Libraries that have the same major from the same src.rpm should be in
the same sub-package as much as possible (i.e. all glib-related libs
in one package, extensions (e.g. nautilus extensions) could be each in
a sub-package); and split only if something would require one lib but
not another from that lib package, i.e. split when needed, not
generally.

For example look at Amarok:
$ urpmf --sourcerpm :amarok | sort | grep lib
lib64amarokcore1:amarok-2.4.1-0.mga1.src.rpm
lib64amaroklib1:amarok-2.4.1-0.mga1.src.rpm
lib64amarokocsclient4:amarok-2.4.1-0.mga1.src.rpm
lib64amarokpud1:amarok-2.4.1-0.mga1.src.rpm
lib64amarok-sqlcollection1:amarok-2.4.1-0.mga1.src.rpm
lib64amarok-transcoding1:amarok-2.4.1-0.mga1.src.rpm

every lib is in a separate package, even though:
- Nothing else uses any of those libs other than Amarok
- Amarok is linked against all of those libs and it wouldn't work if
you uninstall any of them

In such a case grouping all of them in one lib*amarok package would be
easier, there'll never be any file conflicts when the mojor of any of
them changes.

P.S. I am not a packaging expert.

-- 
Ahmad Samir