[systemd-devel] [RFC] the chopping block

[Lennart Poettering]

On Fri, 12.02.16 23:37, Zbigniew Jędrzejewski-Szmek (zbyszek at in.waw.pl) wrote:

> > > > As long as it's only one package I am happy to break this I must say...
> > > I check this now, and samba compiles fine with systemd-compat-libs.rpm
> > > removed. So no problem here.
> > > 
> > > Our compat support consists of two parts:
> > > libsystemd-{journal,daemon,...}.pc and the .so libraries. I think we
> > > should still keep the .pc files for now.
> > 
> > Why? do you know any package that still needs it?
> 
> Not everything is packaged, people might have other code.
> There is no maintenance cost, it's just four tiny text files.
> So if we remove something that was documented as an official
> interface, I think there should be a clear saving.

Well, but we really want people to fix up their stuff eventually. I am
fine with maintaining compat for a while, and we did for 2y, but I am
very sure we should be strict after the transition phase and cut
things off. There *must* always be a strategy how to finish the
transition, and they only viable strategy I see is to make a hard cut
after a long transition phase, and I think that's now.

In general, I think ABI compatibility is a ton more relevant than mere
API compatibility anyway. Maintaining ABI compat means being nice to
users, and I think that's worth a lot. But providing API compat that
requires only a rebuild to fix ABI is just a service to developers,
and that's far less of a priority.

Moreover, the .so files we shipped for the last 2y generated linker
warnings anyway, so people should really have noticed. And fixing
their build is still trivially easy, it just means changing the
pkg-config line in their configure script a tiny bit.

I think we should cut this off fully. Let's please get rid of this
bitrotting crap now!

Lennart

-- 
Lennart Poettering, Red Hat