Brady Hunsaker <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
> Falk, I'd like to get your opinion here. The fundamental problem as I
> see it is that the upstream author (Andrew Makhorin) sees GLPK as still
> under significant development.
>
> I have been reading up on shared libraries, though I don't have
> experience with them yet. As I understand it, creating a shared library
> would require that the code be thread-safe. As I looked through the
> source code, there is one obvious place where it is not thread-safe.
> This shouldn't be too hard to correct, but there may be other places I
> didn't notice.
Yes, this should indeed be feasible.
> More significantly, the API is not really stable, so I expect the soname
> of a shared library would have to be incremented almost every release.
> Some places I read suggest that it may not be appropriate to create a
> shared library for 'stable' in this situation. (These API changes are
> also the issue with the much earlier bug report, which I still need to
> address.)
Well, each library would need to have its own package name, leading to
major hassles when upgrading.
> On the other hand, I understand the frustration from other packages that
> want to depend on GLPK and have a shared library.
>
> I am willing to create and update a shared library if we decide that
> it's appropriate given that the API (and ABI) is likely to change
> frequently. I don't know enough about Debian packaging culture to know
> whether it makes sense to create a shared library in this situation. My
> main concern is that as I understand it, we would need to create a new
> GLPK package (with a new name) every time the API or ABI changes.
>
> I would also contact Andrew (upstream) about the possibility of
> attempting to plan out an API in advance, though I don't know whether
> he'd be receptive.
>
> What do you think?
I think having a shared library would be higly desireable and not too
hard, but without some commitment from upstream to keep the ABI stable
it is not reasonable. It would be nice if you could achieve that...
--
Falk
--
To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
