On 04/25/2013 08:51 AM, Rich Felker
wrote:
On Thu, Apr 25, 2013 at 07:44:39AM -0400, LM wrote:
incompatible licenses. The openssl library can't be used with a GNU
program unless there's a waiver for it because one of the clauses in the
openssl license goes against the GNU license principles. The gnutls
Not _used_ but _distributed_. The GPL does not restrict use
whatsoever (and takes the position that it legally can't do so) so
it's fine to use OpenSSL with GPL programs as long as you don't
distribute the resulting binary. This is of course a problem for
package maintainers/distributions, and distributing both openssl and
the GNU program and a script to link them together might even be seen
as an infringing activity.
What about explicitly loading the library at run-time using
uselib(2) in a plug-in like fashion? Is that also considered
problematic from a GNU perspective?
pkg-config has a nice replacement in pkgconf. (If a list is
created, might be helpful to list possible replacements already out
there.) Would like to see some of the pieces that are essential parts of
the GNU build system/autotools replaced with some more efficient
[...]
of unnecessary work to port applications. Would rather see the current
build systems already used (autotools, cmake, etc.) streamlined or see drop
in replacements that are better designed.
I seem to recall an effort somewhere to do exactly this, but I can't
remember where I saw it..
Here too, one option would be to have all of a library's options,
dependencies, and build steps represented in a real database
(my preference would be PostgreSql), and then have the actual build
script(s) generated using command-line utilities. This is something
that I have been doing in a rather miniature scale in a few
research-related projects, and found to be both effective and
expandable. Arguably, for all projects beyond a certain degree of
complexity, using a database to manage the build is the most
feasible path to follow (no need to name projects that demonstrate
what happens if you don't...), yet switching an existing build
system to one that is database-driven could become quite a
challenge.