Re: [xml] built libxml and libxslt, possible bugs

[Daniel Veillard <veillard redhat com>]

On Tue, Nov 11, 2003 at 10:43:50PM +0100, Tobias Reif wrote:
> On Tue 2003-11-11 Daniel Veillard wrote:
> > I suggest you start thinking differently, there is an economy of
> > scale reusing what other people debugged,
>
> Daniel, just because I prefer setting up XML catalogs myself does not
> mean that I generally don't "reuse what other people debugged".

  Well, I suggested using the docbook DTD package, because it should
set up the catalogs for DocBook. You said your /etc/xml/catalog was
empty, I replied with the usual way to 1/ make the error vanish 2/
automaticlly fill up the catalog with those base entries.

> And since I use many obscure and also private XML languages I have no
> choice other than writing catalogs or -entries myself; there is no
> problem with that by the way.

  No, but there should be no problem with having the RPM install
and uninstall script handle the DocBook entries too. It is what I 
suggested, and what I meant by "reuse".
  
> > and if you didn't perceived that, I do since I'm the one who end-up
> > replying to your questions ;-)
>
> No I did not ask you any questions about setting up my catalog, and I
> won't. The thread was about compiling libxml.

  Well, you also said that /etc/xml/catalog was empty, it was looking
like you were suprised about this. Maybe I misunderstood your message.

> The error message
>   failed to load
>   external entity "test/dtd/4.1.2/docbookx.dtd"
> complained about a missing file under the libxml directory, it was not
> clear if it expected a catalogued schema.

  Well I simply can't keep up with the evolution of DocBook DTDs, I don't
want also to have a full copy of those in libxml regression suite which is
big enough, so yes I rely on the catalog for this. Concerning the error
since in XML there is no way to reference only by a public identifier 
the error is reported with the absent system identifier, that's all.

> I did report those issues (all expcept the libz issue) in order to
> provide useful feedback, in order to help you improve some spects of
> your package.

  Okay some of them were rightfully surprising.
But a lot of them were just looking like the result of a system not
configured to compile (GNOME) software, missing devel packages, missing
docbook packages, missing gtk-doc package. I think I answered to all
of them, some are well known like the schemas regression test error.

Your suggestion:
: For example, perhaps configure could have told me "Please install
: zlib-devel first, then try again. No makefile was generated.".
simply can't work. Libxml2 can and must compile on platforms where 
zlib may not be available, and MUST NOT fail in those case.
If you had reused what others had debugged, i.e. reused libxml2 and
libxslt packages coming from your distribution, or recompiled on your
box based on the source RPM for the latest version you would not
have this problem. The libxml2 spec file states
    Requires: zlib-devel
So yes I maintain:
   - this is a new platform to you apparently, you said
     "I recently switched to Linux and I'm still in the process of setting
      up my environment."
   - you want to do it your way
   - by doing so you miss years of debug and experiences by others
     building and packaging libxml2 and libxslt
   - you were ending with a package without compression support
Yes I think you should reuse software packages, yes I think it's
a transition problem from your side, no I don't see a reason to
start flaming me because you're not used to this environment.
My suggestion still sounds perfectly adequate, just your answer isn't !

> I could as well have given a damn which is what I will
> do in the future, since giving feedback to you nearly always turns
> into extremely unpleasurable experiences.

  Really ? Nearly always and extremely unpleaseant ...
I didn't know I was that nasty, oh well you're just unlucky, I answered
your question, provided software the sources and my free time (it's holliday
today in France), but did it in an
    "Nearly always extremely unpleasant way" 
Sorry about that, I will try to improve. Maybe you would have been better
of with no software, no source and no answer, I should just have gone skying
instead of working on libxml2 today.

  Thank you for the fuck off, I appreciate that to its right value :-(

Daniel

-- 
Daniel Veillard      | Red Hat Network https://rhn.redhat.com/
veillard redhat com  | libxml GNOME XML XSLT toolkit  http://xmlsoft.org/
http://veillard.com/ | Rpmfind RPM search engine http://rpmfind.net/