On 04/11/2012 12:27 PM, David C. Rankin wrote:
> On 04/11/2012 10:37 AM, /dev/ammo42 wrote:
>> Guns don't kill people, people kill people.
>> Concerning libpng it's the same thing: libpng doesn't break
>> compatibility, distributions break compatibility.
>> For example, libpng 1.0 was evicted from Slackware at version 9.0
>> (March 2003) but is still in Fedora 16 (the latest). And libpng 1.0 is
>> still maintained upstream BTW.
>
> Excellent example.
>
>    Especially libpng. I don't know why arch couldn't maintain a libpng12,
> libpng14 and libpng15. The maintenance of the older packages is 'zip' and would
> have continued to provide needed soname report for older programs without
> forcing a rebuild of everything that relied on libpng.

Because arch packagers only maintain what upstream provides. If you want 
older versions look in the AUR. This for me is a good reason to use 
Arch. when a program is released, a new version. I want it right away. I 
am not going to sit around for a year to get a new version. New versions 
mean improvements and fixes, and so a core library like libpng? you bet 
i want that new version, since large parts of my system relies on it!

>    The downside to continue to provide the earlier versions is it provides no
> motivation for brining code current. "Why go to the trouble of updating code for
> libpng15 if you can just install an older libpng and move on?" Human nature
> shows there is little chance of motiving code updates in that circumstance.
>
>    So yes, there will be a bit of pain to update for gcc47, libpng15, etc..., but
> in the end, TDE is current, builds on current libs, is much less time consuming
> to maintain (incompatibility from old code always surfaces), and it make TDE
> that much more likely to be picked up, packaged and maintained by the distros as
> an alternative desktop.
>
>    It's a cup 1/2 empty or cup 1/2 full thing to me.
>