[Portland] Current plan summarized

[Lubos Lunak]

On Wednesday 22 March 2006 14:42, Ian Murdock wrote:
> On Thu, 2006-03-16 at 20:40 +0100, Kevin Krammer wrote:
> > ISVs usually don't use package dependencies at all. They either link
> > statically or ship the shared library as well.
> > Unless it is part of some kind of standard like LSB.
>
> That's why the ultimate goal is to get Portland into the LSB, so ISVs
> can know with certainty whether the runtime support is there without
> the need for static linking or bundling the shared libraries or thinking
> about fallback scenarios etc.

 It's a question whether fallback scenarios can be avoided, because this is 
not about systems but desktops. If the user runs TWM, the app may be out of 
luck.

> If it's in the LSB, ISVs can use it 
> knowing it will work out of the box on LSB compliant systems,
> which means every major distro they're likely to care about today.
>
> I still have this nagging feeling we're making this more
> complicated than it needs to be. What is being done in the DAPI
> library that couldn't otherwise be done with a set of
> scripts?

 Anything that doesn't fit description "dead simple"? Or, in other words, if 
scripts are so good, why do all those silly developers use libraries?

> With a script based approach, you don't have to worry 
> about ABIs at all, and trust me, if there's a way to do this
> without having to worry about ABIS, you want to go that route.

 Feel free to, nobody's stopping you (how many more times will I have to 
repeat this?).

-- 
Lubos Lunak
KDE developer
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