[Pkg-leofs-devel] Bug#748343: erlang-cowboy installs to /usr/lib/erlang/lib

[Bálint Réczey]

Control: notfound -1 0.8.6+dfsg1-1

Dear Simon,

2016-01-24 22:11 GMT+01:00 Balint Reczey <balint at balintreczey.hu>:
> Hi Simon,
>
> On Wed, 25 Jun 2014 11:55:33 +0100 Simon MacMullen <simon at rabbitmq.com>
> wrote:
>> On 25/06/14 10:21, Sergei Golovan wrote:
>> > I think that installing erlang-cowboy into the system-wide Erlang
>> > directory is fine.
>> > If an application needs cowboy then it can either
>> >
>> > 1) ensure it works wit a system-wide version and depend on erlang-cowboy, or
>>
>> This would be tremendously painful since the API of cowboy undergoes
>> frequent incompatible changes.
> This is true for many C libraries as well. The process of upgrading
> libraries involves coordination with reverse dependencies and if any
> Debian package depended on on erlang-cowboy, their maintainers had been
> notified for API bumps.
>
> $ apt-cache rdepends erlang-cowboy
> erlang-cowboy
> Reverse Depends:
>   erlang-cowboy-examples
>
>>
>> > 2) include its own version and make sure that it's the one which is used
>> > (add -pa option to erl or otherwise).
>>
>> We load the code dynamically, so -pa won't work. We may be able to
>> change our code loading strategy though.
> There is also ErlSvc, which may or may not help in maintaining the
> version of Erlang applications used:
> https://packages.qa.debian.org/e/erlsvc.html
>
>>
>> > I'd prefer that this local cowboy wasn't
>> > easily accessible by other Erlang applications (god knows which local changes
>> > it has).
>>
>> Believe me, we do not add it to a path that any other application could
>> pick up.
>>
>> > Anyway, placing applications from regular Debian packages into /usr/lib/erlang
>> > shouldn't be considered a bug.
>>
>> Well, if that's the decision then fair enough. For most other languages
>> though it seems to be policy that the language's standard library goes
>> in a different place from any other random packages; I assumed that was
>> the default.
> I will happily adapt to any scheme for Debian's Erlang packages, but I
> think erlang-cowboy is packaged properly according to the current scheme.
> Note that erlang-cowboy does not change in stable and you can always
> stick to one particular package version on your production system if
> you don't want changes in testing/unstable:

Closing the bug since the package aligns with Debian packaging practices.

Now erlang-cowboy has one reverse dependency, averell thus future API changes
will be done in collaboration with averell's maintainers.

If you would like to keep web stomp in sync with cowboy please have web stomp
packaged in Debian thus we can track it during API changes.

Cheers,
Balint