Re: GNOME vs GNU gcc & glibc

[sungod <sungod atdot org>]

On Thu, 8 Apr 1999, Sergio Brandano wrote:

> 
> >>> What would you combine?
>  
> >>  I would be contented with a self contained gnome-lib.
> 
> >You can't do this, because the other packages aren't part of GNOME.
> >They are support libaries.  They are released seperately.  The
> >gnome-libs package contains -- GASP -- all the files for gnome-libs.
> >The other files are not maintained by the GNOME people.
> 
>  Then GNOME depends on non-GNOME code, 

Yes.

>  and it's development is
>  constrained by the non-GNOME people? Is that the case?

No.

Are you familiar with the concept of shared libraries? We've been using
them for a long time, and dealing with them, although a little more
complicated than dealing with an all-statically-linked system, is pretty
much widely understood by the rest of the community. We take for granted
that each new software package may depend on some other libraries; at the
very LEAST we can count on it requiring libc5 or glibc.

You can, of course, build and distribute entirely statically-linked
binaries yourself, if you like, but for the rest of us, we largely
understand the ramifications of using dynamically-loaded shared libraries
and are willing to deal with them. For a while this will be inconvenient,
since the required libraries aren't part of the top 5 distributions yet
(as libc5 and/or glibc are), but once they are, the matter of dealing with
these libraries will be just as invisible as dealing with your c library
is now.

In the meantime, you might be able to make yourself useful by MAKING such
binary distribution packages for the distribution(s) of your choice,
including statically-linked packages, if you find them so desirable. Your
contribution to the community will be respected and appreciated by many
who share your viewpoint, I'm sure.

 -- 

"The brain is a wonderful organ. It starts working the moment you
get up in the morning and does not stop until you get into the
office." -Robert Frost