Re: Here's an RPM fix!

[Gleef <gleef capital net>]

On Sun, 31 May 1998, Gene C. wrote:
> I agree that this conflict between the stable/production and development
> versions of gtk+ is a problem and certainly has caused me to spend time
> "fixing" things that could be spent more productively elsewhere but I think
> you may have the "wrond end" of the problem.  Your fix is something that
> you or I or others can do themselves.  However, a better fix is for the
> gtk+/gnome developers (I hope you are listening) to change the name of the
> the gtk+ rpm that is needed by gnome (perhaps to something like gtk+-DEV or
> gtk+-gnome or gnome-gtk+.

The GTK developers are not responsible for the RPMs, they release
tarballs.  The gtk+-1.0.2 package I got from the RedHat contrib directory
was following standard RPM naming conventions.  The gtk+ packages
autobuilt to the RedHat Labs site were named just fine, until the switch
to 1.1.  At that point one may argue that they should have switched the
name.

 
> While there is still a conflict with the development libraries/header
> files, at least the regular shared libs can coexist with the above change
> (or your fix).

It's very dangerous to have two sets of header files.  If you do
development, do it for just one version of the library, or you are asking
for trouble.  With my package installed, there is no conflict with the
libraries (I included that block in the post to show the most likely
error message that someone rushing through the installation is to find,
and the fix for it immediately after in general, I find that makes for
many fewer complaints in such cases).


> It is too bad that the developers did not consider that their versions of
> libraries and other files might have to coexist with "production" versions
> and put all of the gnome code into some other directory structure and use
> additional PATH and LD_LIBRARY variables.  At some point it may still be
> desirable to do this when even developers would like to be able to run both
> a "production" version and a "test" version on the same system without
> rebooting to a different system (which is what I now do).

As far as I know it was no developer that decided.  It was an automated
script that noticed the version was newer, and updated the name
accordingly.  It was left unchanged due to either a) inertia, b) desire to
keep from confusing people with changes or c) lack of knowledge that it
was a problem with some people.

Remember, the GTK developers aren't touching our RPMs, and the most
hardcore GNOME developers are working exclusively out of CVS, and seldom
look at the RPMs.

The best solution in my mind would be to for someone to change the name of
the gtk rpms to something that won't conflict.  If there is a problem with
doing that, or nobody wants to, my RPM is available to help people avoid
conficts, and to keep all the RPM dependency checking features working
properly.

-Gleef