Policy for Dependencies

[Christoph Cullmann]

Hi,

> On 2015-10-13, Martin Graesslin <mgraesslin at kde.org> wrote:
>> I'm not sure whether it's the best solution. The problem you try to fix with
>> it is distros breaking packaging. I agree with Martin K that this is a huge
>> problem and that it will happen - since the automation of packages I also
>> experienced that nobody looks at the output of optional dependencies and the
>> packaging breaks.
> 
> I do think that such packagers should be slapped around with a large
> trout. Or something.
> 
>> But I'm not sure how this could be done. Anyway, long story short: I think we
>> need the other way around. It should be optional by default, but should be
>> turned into stricter requirements on the linux distro case.
> 
> There is also another angle to the dependencies. What dependencies can
> be enabled/disabled without requiring changes to users of the library.
> 
> Or put it another way. Is the enabling/disabling of a given feature ABI
> and API compatible.
> 
> I do think that for features that doesn't impact the API/ABI we should
> make it very easy to enable/disable them. Like based on having things
> present on the system or not.
> 
> But for things that affects the API/ABI of the library, people should be
> explicit about it.
At the moment I am only talking about dependencies that would not change the API/ABI
but just remove some internal parts to be build or tools to be shipped.

I agree, that if the API/ABI is modified, it should be made explicit, to not
introduce incompatibilties too easily.

Greetings
Christoph

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