Re: Restructuring gettext

[Charles Wilson <cwilson at ece dot gatech dot edu>]

Christopher Faylor wrote:
> 
> On Thu, Dec 13, 2001 at 12:55:53PM -0500, Charles Wilson wrote:
> >However, this means that the new gettext dll is not backward compatible
> >with packages linked against the old dll
> 
> The term "glutton for punishment" springs to mind.

Well, solve one problem, create another...but it's easier to type
"install libintl0, you blockhead" than it is to explain about gettext
wackiness, --with-included-gettext, etc etc.

> >How should we handle this sort of thing in the future, when setup.hints
> >of OTHER packages need to be updated, but the one forcing the change
> >(me, in this case) is not the maintainer of those other packages?
> >
> >Oh yeah: link
> >  http://www.neuro.gatech.edu/users/cwilson/cygutils/testing/gettext/
> 
> I think we should consider it the responsibility of the package maintainer
> to maintain all occurrences of the name of his package.  So, it would
> be within your right to change mutt to accomodate your changes -- as
> long as you let the mutt maintainer know about this.

Okay, I can do that currently -- but once the meta-data is folded into
the -src archive (bin archive?) it gets a bit trickier.

Any other comments about the restructuring itself?  Unfortunately, I see
this sort of thing being necessary for a lot of packages that provide
DLL's: and not just because "we" change the way we build 'em.  Sometimes
the upstream folks change the API -- like readline.  Hopefully these
disruptions can be "spaced out" so they don't all hit at once...

Anyway, I'm treating the "lib*" packages as "shared lib only" and the
"gettext" package as "devel (statlib, implib, headers) + utils & doc" 
rather than having a "gettext-devel" and "gettext" which would be the
Red Hat / Mandrake way of doing it.  Again, my argument: lib* packages
are necessary(*) so go ahead with that split, but it is unnecessary to
split anything else so don't be needlessly disruptive.

(*) Necessary, that is, if we want to fix the --with-included-gettext
problem.

--Chuck