packaging a static library

[Tom "spot" Callaway]

On 12/30/2009 05:01 PM, Kevin Kofler wrote:
> Tom "spot" Callaway wrote:
>> FWIW, I'm pretty sure this is not against current Fedora policies,
>> assuming that the libtommath maintainer signs off on it and there is no
>> conflict between the two packages.
> 
> I guess it's indeed not against the letter of the policies, it's still 
> against their spirit though. Compat packages make sense where they're 
> required for technical or licensing reasons (the latter case being 
> particularly annoying though). In this case, they're neither. And our 
> objectives are to ship the latest software, not an old version just because 
> it went through some sort of formal audit and/or certification.

Well, my concerns around this are:

1. That this library will be impossible to bugfix without losing its
"audit approval"
2. (A) That the OLPC dependent packages in Fedora which depend on this
library will want to link against this compat package rather than the
current revision
OR
2. (B) That the OLPC dependent packages in Fedora will also need to be
forked to link against this compat package rather than the current revision.

However, it is worth noting that the OLPC OS build is a Fedora Remix,
rather than a spin, so they may be able to get by with simply having the
compat libtommath-audited package (containing shared rather than static
libs) present, and not making any other changes in Fedora.

~spot