[Pkg-openldap-devel] Serious error in the packaging of OpenLDAP 2.3

[Quanah Gibson-Mount]

--On Saturday, February 24, 2007 6:49 PM -0500 Stephen Frost 
<sfrost at snowman.net> wrote:

> * Steve Langasek (vorlon at debian.org) wrote:
>> Hmm.  Well, the .la files were dropped for a reason -- I just can't
>> remember now what the precise reason was, and there's little detail in
>> the changelog. Stephen, do you remember why this was done, and what
>> problems reverting this change might cause?
>
> My recollection was the general stupidity of them (as they're completely
> unnecessary...), there was some concern about them bringing in
> completely inappropriate Depends (like, the -dev depending on *every
> -dev package underneath*, even if not used directly), and the problems
> they cause when they're not *always* there (ie: they exist at some
> levels but not at others and libtool falls apart because of it).
>
>> At a guess, the reason was the stupidity of .la files hard-coding a list
>> of indirect library dependencies which would shift underneath the
>> package and break loading with libltdl; but I'm honestly not sure if
>> this was ever a problem with libltdl.
>
> I know the hard-coded list of indirect library dependencies was an
> issue, but I'm not sure if the issue was the one you describe here..

So I'm sure all of these issues were filed upstream, as documented in the 
Debian policy manual, section 4.3.

And whether or not the use of the ".la" files is *necessary*, the issue 
here is that they are the documented methodology *by* the upstream 
provider.  Steve, although there may only be a single man page referencing 
the ".la" files, have you even *bothered* to read the OpenLDAP admin guide? 
The OpenLDAP FAQ?  Search Google for "moduleload openldap"?  As someone who 
deals with questions on the upstream mailing list, I initially joined this 
list in the hopes that the Debian packages could be improved in such a way 
as to make it so that when questions came upstream, any problems would not 
be because of oddities in the Debian packaging.  I see no real interest, 
however, on the Debian side of things in making this a reality, so I'm 
unsubscribing from this list, and I no longer care one way or the other 
what happens with the Debian packages.  So however you resolve (or don't 
resolve) what I raised here, I don't care.  And don't copy me on it.

--Quanah


--
Quanah Gibson-Mount
Principal Software Developer
ITS/Shared Application Services
Stanford University
GnuPG Public Key: http://www.stanford.edu/~quanah/pgp.html