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

[Tobias Reif <tobiasreif pinkjuice com>]

On Tue 2003-11-11 Daniel Veillard wrote:
>   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".

I see.

> > 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.

I'm happy to be of help.

> 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.

yep

> I think I answered to all of them, some are well known like the
> schemas regression test error.

I see. I was aware of the fact that some might be well-known, I just
thought I'd post all possible issues I saw during compilation and
installation since some might be of interest to you. None of them
(except the zlib issue) were problems here for what I do (the tools
ran fine), just data points which looked like they might point to
posible improvements.

> 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.

I see.

> 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.i

I didn't want to confuse my package manager, I thought (based on
experience) that installing locally (under my home dir) from source
would be the strategy representing the least risk for dependency
conflicts, since I might want to run several versions of xmllint and
xsltproc, and many other tools depend on libxml.

(For most other things I use YaST which works very well so far.)

> 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."

Yep, I've been using Linux for some years, but now it's my main OS and
I'm setting up my working environment.

>    - you want to do it your way

Not really.

I simply wanted to install the latest xmllint and xsltproc with the
least hassle, and the only problem I had was that I hadn't installed
zlib-devel before that. The rest was general feedback, I thought that
some of the data might be SuSE 9.0 specific for example.

>    - by doing so you miss years of debug and experiences by others
>      building and packaging libxml2 and libxslt

I thought that the non-SuSE RPMs might possibly cause more problems
than compiling, but I now see your point that RPMs should cause less
problems.

>    - 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.

I did not intend to offend you, please accept my apologies.

> My suggestion still sounds perfectly adequate, just your answer isn't !

I wasn't aware of the fact that you referred to choosing RPMs over the
.tar.gzs.

> > 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 used words too strong, sorry. But based on previous private
dicsussion I know that you're aware of the fact that sometimes you
react a bit "rough".

> 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,

Accepted.

> I will try to improve.

Me too :)

> Maybe you would have been better of with no software, no source and
> no answer,

Perhaps I should have posted only the one issue that was relevant for
me, and trust that you know about the others or find them yourself.

> I should just have gone skying instead of working on libxml2 today.

While I really appreciate your work on those tools and libs it's no
problem if I have to wait a day or two for an answer while you sky :)

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

Again, please accept my apologies.

Thanks again for your help with the zlib problem.

Tobi

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