Reentrant flex

[Michael A. Peters]

On Mon, 2005-11-21 at 13:39 +1100, Bojan Smojver wrote:
> I would like to submit one of my own pieces of software (mod_spin: 
> http://www.rexursive.com/software/modspin/) for inclusion in Fedora 
> Extras, but in order to do that, reentrant flex (2.5.31) would need to 
> exist in extras as well, as my software uses it as a build dependency. 
> Shipping reentrant flex within my package is not an option, as they use 
> incompatible licences (BSD with advertising clause for flex and GPL for 
> mod_spin).
> 
> In order to resolve the conundrum of not upsetting stock flex, I built 
> reentrat flex package (I call it flex-reentrant), which lives in a 
> completely isolated location of /usr/local/flex (and then ./bin, etc.) 
> to prevent clashes with anything system wide. Now, I have absolutely no 
> idea if this is the way things are supposed to be done or not, so I'm 
> looking for some input from people that had to build an alternative 
> version of the same software for the extras repository. Pointers in 
> regards to reentrant flex are especially welcome.
> 
> Obviously, for all this to happen, an interest in including the 
> reentrant flex and mod_spin would need to exist. If there is no such 
> interest, please disregard this question.

An interest in them does not need to exist, though it helps.
I for one am very happy when maintainers of code want to maintain their
packages in Extras - I think it has better odds of quality packaging for
those who are interested in it.

With respect to reentrat flex - packaging it in /usr/local is not an
option. Hopefully a solution can be found that meets the packaging
guidelines. Renaming the conflicting files to something else *might* be
a workable solution - I'm assuming you can specify which flex you want
in the Makefile. I don't know if that's the best solution.

Is it impossible to use standard flex?