Ryan Hill wrote:
Richard Freeman wrote:
I'm
actually hard pressed to think of any unix-based software that uses
the filename to store a mandatory file format versioning specifier
of some kind.
$ ls /usr/lib
I was referring to a file FORMAT versioning scheme - not a file CONTENT
versioning scheme. The formats of all the files in /usr/lib are
generally identical. Where they vary it has nothing to do with their
filenames. The reason for the version in the filenames is that the
content is versioned.
The dynamic linker doesn't need to consult the filename to figure out
how to parse a shared object. It only consults the filename to figure
out which shared object is needed. That is actually analogous to
putting the package name/version in the ebuild filename.
In any case, I'm not trying to say that these issues absolutely prevent
the adoption of GLEP 55. It just leaves a sour taste in my mouth, and
keeps nagging at me that there must be a better way.
I'd rather see the number of filename variations be kept to a minimum.
Sure, if we were talking about a one-time change from ebuild to ebuild2
and in five years a change to ebuild3 then that would be one thing. It
seems like we could be up to ebuild-kde4-3.2 in six months.
And I don't mean to suggest that I don't think that efforts would be
made to keep things sensible. It just seems like once we start down
that road it will be hard to turn around if we don't like where we end up.
