Re: Shared libraries

[hasufell <hasufell@...>]

Luiz Henrique de Figueiredo:
> Here are some reasons why we do not build shared libraries:
> 
> - The incantations for building shared libraries vary widely among platforms;

Yes, and I am only talking about a single platform and the patch would
only affect a single platform.

> 
> - We don't want to have to rely on libtool. Last time I checked, libtool was
>   a large shell script, much larger than all the rest of the Lua code.

You don't have to rely on libtool. As already said.

> - There have been no mission-critical bugs in Lua that have made it imperative
>   to link apps with a different release of the same version of Lua.

You don't make a backup, because your harddrive has never failed?
Right... and OpenSSL never had a major vulnerability (except the last one).

> 
> - The Makefiles we provide are for convenience only. Experts can do what
>   they like with them, most probably ignore them. If there is need to build
>   Lua as a shared library downstream, packagers will know what to do and
>   users won't need to bother.

This doesn't address any of the inconsistencies that hacking Makefiles
downstream causes. These inconsistencies and divergence between distros
causes problems for lua users (not just us).
A standard upstream way to do things will make it less likely that
people randomly hack these things downstream.

That was the purpose of my initial mail. And I have already explained it
in more detail.

> 
> Bottom line: Lua is not a fundamental software component in an OS.

Yes, it is. Every library that is used by multiple programs is a
fundamental software component.

Lua is currently used by 127 packages. If that is not fundamental, then
what is?


> We don't think it needs to be updated dynamically OS-wide.

OS maintainers disagree with you.

> On the contrary, this may
> break apps that use different versions of Lua.
> 

Distributions have means to express ABI compatibility within their
dependencies.


Bottom line: Afais you don't care about distributions and don't care
about enhancements to your Makefiles, although both things directly
affect lua users.

If I am wrong, why didn't you say "provide a non-libtool patch then and
we might merge"?