Public SourceMage Discussion List

[Arwed von Merkatz <v.merkatz AT gmx.net>]

On Tue, Feb 28, 2006 at 11:01:21PM -0800, Andrew Stitt wrote:
> 
> As a user (of window managers), I think it'd be useful to be able to try
> both simultaneously. Regardless of how its implemented. I dont particularly
> care if theres one spell that does both, or two spells, so long as I
> can try them side-by-side (given what people have said, that seems like
> a reasonable/common thing to do).
> 
> I agree its a bit confusing that the enlightenment spell installs
> a binary called e16 and the e17 spell installs a binary called
> enlightenment. I guess that was a result of the upstream guys changing
> names around and unintentional on our part. That should definitly get
> resolved somehow.
> 
> Maybe have the 'enlightenment' spell deprecated in favor of an e16
> spell. Then have an e16-profile and an e17-profile, and have e-profile
> ask then depend on one or the other. And lastly have the enlightenment
> spell be a fake-spell that asks the user what they'd like, then depends
> on either e16 or e17. Thoughts?
> 
> It seems like that would give the greatest amount of freedom. Users
> could cast e-profile or cast enlightenment if they just want enlightenment
> and arent aware that they have a choice beforehand. Or if they know
> what they want, they can just cast e16-profile or e17-profile (OR e16
> or e17 as the case may be) or both. Maybe theres a better way to do this
> without extra fake spells? Am I oversimplifying this into just a
> spell-UI issue?

Sounds like a reasonable solution to me.
 
> In the past it seems like we've split up spells without much grief. There
> are gnome1 and gnome2 libs and apps. Maybe that was because gtk+
> and gtk+2 are both used by certain apps. I wasn't involved in that
> discussion, presumably its in the archives somewhere though. We also
> seem to have seperate apache spells for version 1 and 2, although they
> seem to conflict with one-another. Theres also mozilla and firefox,
> but not firefox-cvs. Im trying to figure where the line gets drawn.
> 
> In the past was there some rule we followed for when to merge or split
> spells? Do the rules change if theres a multitude of spells involved as
> opposed to just one spell (like firefox, which has a stable and
> cvs version)? Do the rules change if the software actively installs
> non-conflicting files on its own?

There's no officical rule. We have the standard for multi-version spells
that should be followed, and we prefer single spells for multiple
versions of the same software, as long as all dependendees of that
software work with all versions. That last condition can maybe be
relaxes with sub_depends available, as we can now depend on a specific
branch of a spell.
When upstream makes stuff parallel installable, they're basically
saying, "it's reasonable and expected to have both versions of this
installed". In that case we should have seperate spells for them too.
Take for example gtk+ and gtk+2. Officially they're the same library in
two different versions, but made parallel installable by upstream.
Obviously there's a need for having both of them installed at the same
time, as quite some projects never ported their stuff to gtk+2.

For stuff that isn't installable in parallel, the rule of thumb should
be code duplication. If the two versions are similar so the spell can
easily handle both, make it one spell. If they're vastly different so
you would essentially have two spells artificially merged into one with
conditionals, split them.

-- 
Arwed v. Merkatz                              Source Mage GNU/Linux developer
                                                    http://www.sourcemage.org