[Freedombox-discuss] RELOAD / P2P SIP discussion - reSIProcate?

[Daniel Pocock]

> Back in the time when I tried three things complicated packaging: The
> use of the heavily patched ares library in contrib, the non-stable
> ABI/ABI between releases, and the build system.
> 
> The ares case is fixed: I helped to push patches upstream and became the
> co-maintainer of c-ares in Debian.

I remember encountering that at the very beginning - I'm glad to hear
you've but that problem in it's place finally

> To fix the API/ABI problem I decided to package versioned packages like
> for example boost does. Parts of my efforts are still available:
>> http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/resiprocate.git;a=summary
> (repository uses topgit)

I saw the discussion about this on debian-mentor.  Your solution is
good, and the API/ABI changes are a non-issue for people on a stable
Debian version who only want to use binaries that are built with Debian
in mind.  Supporting non-Debian binaries should be the responsibility of
those who make the non-Debian binaries: they can release alternate
versions of their product for each stable Debian release, for example.

I'm fairly confident that if a particular version of reSIProcate is in
Debian stable, that will also start to impact the way upstream operate
in future.  As they haven't been packaged on any platform whatsoever,
they haven't had to think about this issue.

> And with the autotools branch #3 seems to be tackled.

Exactly - it also makes it easier to package for other platforms,
cross-compile, etc.  Furthermore, it removes one barrier for people new
to the reSIProcate project, they will no longer need to understand the
bespoke build system.