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.

  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.

-- 
David C. Rankin, J.D.,P.E.