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Re: quality of recently imported Gnome packages



"Jörn Clausen" <joernc%googlemail.com@localhost> writes:

> 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.

It looks like the 2nd branch of the else might be for Linux.

> 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.

Generally if upstream doesn't care about portability it's an uphill
battle in pkgsrc.  My view is that if pkgsrc does as well as the package
does in a non-pkgsrc build on the same OS.  The right fix is for
upstream to care about portability to all reasonable mostly-POSIX
systems, but failing that pkgsrc takes patches.

> 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. 

I agree.  Here, the bug might be gnome-mount depending on hal, but it's
hard to say.

I am generally in favor of global options.  You probably want -hal, and
I usually want -samba.

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