quality of recently imported Gnome packages

["Jörn Clausen" <joernc%googlemail.com@localhost>]

Hi!

I just opened pkg/40016 (security/policykit does not compile on
Solaris). I tried to install the current version of devel/glib2
(2.18.2) before, which failed as well, so I switched back to 2.18.0
from 2008Q3. In between, devel/libvolume_id failed, because the code
in several files looks like this:

#if defined(__FreeBSD__) || defined(__NetBSD__) || defined(__DragonFly__)
#include <sys/endian.h>
#else
#include <endian.h>
#include <byteswap.h>
#endif

Solaris has none of these headers, and doesn't need any, the solution
was to remove these code snippets completely.

This leaves me wondering, how much these packages have been tested
(outside pkgsrc), and what the focus of their respective maintainers
are. When I reported a problem in libgsf via Gnome Bugzilla (see
pkg/39820), the answer was essentially "I don't care about other
OSes". The code documented in pkg/40016 points into the same
direction.

I consider it a real danger, if more and more packages of this quality
are needed for basic libraries. I tried to install gimp, which led via
librsvg -> libgsf -> gnome-vfs -> gnome-mount -> hal -> policykit to
this broken package. If possible, the diffusion of low-level
functionality like HAL into high-level libraries should be cut off at
some point, at least as a build option. If this is not possible, maybe
the Gnome folks need to be convinced to modularize their packages
better.

-- 
Joern Clausen
joernc%gmail.com@localhost
http://www.oe-files.de/oefiles/
http://thebloeg.blogspot.com/