Re: distro-configs files, autogen.sh options, defaults etc

Hi,

> We should not prefer system libraries if the internal copy has an important fix.

The interesting question now is: what qualifies an 'important fix' ?

IMHO, when the current stable release is really broken.
But: in this case, most likely, the distros will clean up the mess anyways,
so again we can relax and let the distros do their job.

> You see that most system libraries should be safe to use.
> In addition, distro specific packages has to use system libraries
> because it oreduces maintenance effort, optimizes build and download
> size. So, the system libraries are tested and should be tested. Why
> not use them during development?

Exactly. I'd suggest doing development/testing on stable releases
of various major distros (whichever individuals prefer).

> We already prefer some system libraries by default: e.g. glibc,

BTW: i remeber, several years ago, Oo even shipped its own copy of
glibc and gcc ... ;-o

> libpng, libjpeg? Where is the edge?

That's the important question!

> 2. official TDF release:
>
>       + need to use as many internal libraries as possible to be
>           usable on different systems
>
>           => we could solve it by adding --without-system-<bla> to
>              distro-configs/*.conf; we have beta/rc phase to find
>              bugs
>              here

I would prefer dropping that completely from the main codebase, and
instead build an separate meta-build layer. Essentially just a shell
script that fetches the libs, builds and installs them to some suiteable
prefix in the correct order and the builds LO. It would override the
standard search pathes (mainly pkg-config tweaking). That script would
take the same layer as the distro toolchain in the whole stack.

> 3. developer builds:
>       + they need all features to make sure that they do not break
>           anything; they do not mind about system libraries; IMHO,
>           the
>           more system libraries, the less potential build problems
>           and
>           the faster build
>
>         => they will be happy if configure takes systems libraries if
>            they are available by default

I would prefer when it *only* takes a bundled library, if I explicitly
force it to do so for some damn good reason.


cu
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