[pulseaudio-tickets] [Bug 64360] pa_format_info_free2 has disappeared

[bugzilla-daemon at freedesktop.org]

https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=64360

--- Comment #6 from Sjoerd Simons <sjoerd at luon.net> ---

> > Why do the distro maintainers demand adding cruft back? I understand if they
> > complain and call us stupid and whatever, because we cause extra work for
> > them, but there's absolutely no long term need to add pa_format_info_free2()
> > back. It's only the distro tools that will cause trouble, no application
> > code will ever break because of this.
> 
> It would be good to have more opinions on this. Sjoerd, what do you think?

The distro tools don't cause "troubles" they do their job and red flag whenever
symbols disappear and the ABI is striclty speaking broken, which can cause
issues for applications.. What the tools can't do is work out that this bit of
ABI was never used by applications ever, hence maintainers coming to complain
because also they can't know if this is the case :)

In practise I'm ok with dropping a symbol from a library (in debian dropping it
from the symbols file which the tools use to check), but only if people can
guarantee that this was never ever meant to be external ABI in the first place
and really nobody uses it (which might be the case here already, didn't read
the full thread).

>From a distribution perspective, what i do tend to ask upstreams is to take
their ABI and soname versioning seriously (you may be surprised, but some folks
just don't care because they're not directly impacted by getting it wrong)..
Part of that is making sure you only expose the symbols that one actually cares
about and is happy to maintain over time (until the soname version is bumped
essentially). Note that this isn't a complaint about pulseaudio, just a general
statement :)


So i guess, again with my distro hat on, If the pulseaudio maintainers are
happy to say: This symbol won't be used by any applications and you won't get a
massive fallout of applications that stop working in your distro if pulse is
updated to this version.. Then i would be okish with it being dropped :) (Oh
and if it causes a massive fallout, i'll come back and shout at you, be warned
:p)

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