Bug 445130 – document that pkgconfig files should not be modified/added/renamed

• Status: RESOLVED WORKSFORME
• Product: Documentation

[Description Julian Ospald 2012-11-28 23:10:52 UTC]

Created attachment 330866 [details, diff]
textm.xml.diff

see patch and current discussion on -dev-ml about pkgconfig.eclass

reason is simple: it's a common interface
if packagers mess with it, then it's not common anymore

there might be some exceptions where fixing them right away is necessary/acceptable, but in general it's bad

[Comment 1 Markos Chandras (RETIRED) 2012-11-29 09:27:49 UTC]

s/cause/because/

It's better if you modify the title to be "pkgconfig files". We have have to expand it in the future to cover other things you must or must not do with
pkgconfig files.

[Comment 2 Julian Ospald 2012-11-29 13:21:27 UTC]

Created attachment 330930 [details, diff]
text.xml.diff

is that ok?

[Comment 3 Markos Chandras (RETIRED) 2012-11-29 13:32:55 UTC]

Looks good to me but shouldn't we wait for the -dev discussion to reach a consensus before we document that?

[Comment 4 Julian Ospald 2012-11-29 18:04:45 UTC]

the eclass proposal was pulled back by the author and I didn't hear any1 say "it's good to modify them downstream"

so let's apply it

[Comment 5 Julian Ospald 2012-12-04 19:27:25 UTC]

commit b0a519807f82c2190129dfa662922c8b061eb368

[Comment 6 Samuli Suominen (RETIRED) 2012-12-04 22:07:19 UTC]

there should be no such policy, we have plenty of sci@ and binary-only apps where it completely unrealistic to hope for an pkg-config file
this is case by case basis and it only requires common-sense

so whatever gets added as a doc, is only a non-mandatory recommendation, that's all

[Comment 7 Julian Ospald 2012-12-04 22:13:53 UTC]

(In reply to comment #6)
> there should be no such policy, we have plenty of sci@ and binary-only apps
> where it completely unrealistic to hope for an pkg-config file
> this is case by case basis and it only requires common-sense

The policy says that there may be exceptions and that those should be discussed with other developers (primarily to check if there is no other solution).

[Comment 8 Ulrich Müller 2014-05-13 19:34:33 UTC]

(In reply to Julian Ospald (hasufell) from comment #5)
> commit b0a519807f82c2190129dfa662922c8b061eb368

Today's council decision:
"The council agrees to revise the devmanual policy regarding pkg-config files to set guidelines for non-upstream pkg-config files but to leave the inclusion up to the maintainer's discretion.  Wording will be worked out following the meeting, and in the meantime the changes introduced in bug 445130 will be reverted."

[Comment 9 Julian Ospald 2014-07-04 19:41:35 UTC]

So we currently have a documentation regression? If nobody cares about this problem anymore we may as well close it as WONTFIX.