next level of freedesktop.org

[Jody Goldberg]

On Thu, Jul 17, 2003 at 03:01:47PM +0200, Waldo Bastian wrote:
> 
> It can now happen that a new GNOME 2.7 requires a new libxslt 2.7.8 but that 
> for some reason libxslt 2.7.8 breaks KDE 3.5. Sure, we all try to stay 
> backwards (binary) compatible, but bugs do happen and maybe KDE 3.5 relied on 
> some undocumented behavior.

This raises an interesting issue.  There are a few libs like
libxml/libxslt that are used fairly universally.  Does it make sense
to explicitly move them into the nascent project ?  IMHO, yes.  The
more explicitly common code the better.

Is there utility in versioned package of common libraries ?
    - zlib / libbz2
    - libpng/jpeg/....
or are these now static enough not to require it ?

The more politically charged question then becomes, how about glib ?
Its already used in several components, or dependents of components,
in all of the desktop projects, is it acceptable as an explicit
platform library, or is the 'g' stigma value too high.  This would
avoid requiring pkg-config having to build its own static copy, and
would probably make d-bus easier.  It would also pave the way for
future inclusion of something like a libgsf, common to Office level
applications.

Note, none of these require hosts, I'm only exploring the notion of
a versioned set of 'platform' libraries that the various projects
could depend on.