Multilib Middle-Ground

[Les Mikesell]

Kevin Kofler wrote:
> Les Mikesell <lesmikesell <at> gmail.com> writes:
>> Can't you just always provide at least 2 versioned libraries?  One 
>> essentially equivalent to the latest released RHEL or Centos version(s) 
>> and the other whatever flavor is current?  And unless apps need 
>> something new, build them against the stable version.
> 
> Fedora is about CURRENT technology. They will ALWAYS prefer the CURRENT version 
> of the libraries if it is at all possible. Why should Fedora build against an 
> old one? You are using the wrong distribution.

Yes, I probably overstated the need for long term backwards 
compatibility in fedora itself, although I still don't see why it is 
impossible or undesirable.   What I really want is a smooth transition 
between those 'right' distibutions....  That is, assuming RHEL or Centos 
as stable production environments, I want to be able to have a 
development environment that doesn't take major work to keep running 
things from the  current production environment and by the time of the 
next enterprise release also provides a smooth transition in that 
direction.  Sort of like the old days of using RH X.0 for 
development/testing and by X.2 things were good to go.

>> I'd like to think of distributions as having some editorial control over 
>> what they ship.  If someone writes crap you don't have to publish it. 
>> Or at least overlap old/new versions for a complete version run.
> 
> We can't ship unmaintained old versions forever. Are you going to maintain the 
> obsolete branches of things like GCC?

Isn't that already being done elsewhere?  It is only unnecessary 
fedora-specific incompatibilities that would keep you from using it.

-- 
   Les Mikesell
    lesmikesell at gmail.com