[libreoffice-projects] minutes of ESC call ...

[Alex Thurgood]

Le 11/10/2013 11:21, Stephan Bergmann a écrit :

> But what was the story with mysql-connector-ooo, these days apparently
> enabled via a switch called --enable-ext-mariadb-connector?  That switch
> is off by default, and it is not mentioned in any distro-configs/*.conf,
> so appears to be effectively dead code.  Or was that the extension that
> cannot be included in installation sets for whatever reason (and is only
> included in our source tree to make it easy to build it)?  I guess
> Lionel knows.
>

To the extent that I can get a successful build, I have been building on 
Mac OSX (and to a certain extent on Linux 32/64 for testing purposes), 
near enough on a daily basis, with a kitchen sink approach to the 
extensions because no-one else does them - certainly not TDF.

I rely on that mysql/mariadb connector extension being buildable via 
that switch as the connector extension is by far the most capable 
solution for me (and I am not alone judging by the requests on the 
user's list) for accessing a mysql/mariadb database, rather than say, 
using JDBC or ODBC. If the plan is now to retire that switch, needless 
to say, I will not be very happy, unless there is some other failsafe, 
guaranteed, multi-OS/arch  way of doing it.

The same goes with the other extensions. Perhaps it is not in TDF's 
interest to have all that spurious extension code lying around, but in 
that case IMHO a clear decision should be taken to either exclude it 
from the repo, have it hosted separately with instructions on how to 
build/install. Honestly, if we are no longer going to care for the "ext" 
extensions that are currently in the repo, why have them at all ?

I'm merely attempting to understand the reasoning into the 
decision-making process that determines whether or not an extension 
makes it into the main code, and at the moment I'm at a loss to 
understand how that reasoning works, as it all seems rather opaque to 
me. As regards licensing of the mysql/mariadb connector code, my 
understanding was that we now build with LGPL code completely, or did 
this not happen in the end ?


Sorry, if I appear a bit lost here, but I am.

Alex