[ On Wednesday, August 21, 2002 at 23:27:05 (+0100), David Laight wrote: ]
> Subject: Re: pkgsrc sickness
>
> Alternatively the versioned shared libraries should mean that
> the old programs still work.  So one might ask why the rebuild
> is forced?

IFF they are properly versioned.  However without detailed internals
knowledge of both the libraries and the applications using them it's
often nearly impossible to know when version increments are and are not
necessary, so in many cases it's safest to change the version ID and
thus you end up having to do a rebuild anyway.

> Only if the output from a program changes do you really need
> to worry about reinstalling things.

and how do you measure this?  how do you know when you have excercised
all the critical code paths in the application?  such a level of testing
is impossible black magic for most of the modules in pkgsrc.

unless the library provider can guarantee 100% perfect backward binary
interface compatability, or unless you know for certain that none of the
potentially changed interfaces are used by a given applications, the
only safe thing to do is rebuild anyway.

It should not be the pkgsrc maintainers' responsibility to discover and
track all these very intricate interface details.  Indeed it's probably
impossible for the pkgsrc maintainers to fulfil such a responsibility.

-- 
								Greg A. Woods

+1 416 218-0098;            <g.a.woods@ieee.org>;           <woods@robohack.ca>
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