Re: [ULOGD PATCH 3/6] Fix warning about unused variable if NFLOG_GID is not available.

[Eric Leblond <eric@inl.fr>]

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Hi,

On Saturday, 2008 June 28 at 11:54:14 +0200, Pablo Neira Ayuso wrote:
> Eric Leblond wrote:
> > On Friday, 2008 June 27 at 21:41:33 +0200, Eric Leblond wrote:
> >> Hello,
> >>> As I'm about to conclude a massive release of libraries and the tools, I
> >>> think that forcing the use of a recent library version is better as it
> >>> also contains several bugfixes.
> > 
> > I did not really understand the meaning of the word "forcing" till I discover
> > that you've forced the use of at least libnfnetlink 0.0.39 in configure.in.
> > 
> > IMHO, this is too strict and not an easy step into ulogd2 acceptance:
> > Instead of having a single software to compile, users will need to
> > compile almost all libnf* library :(
> 
> This latest library release-set includes several fixes. Having the
> lastest version installed always suppose an extra effort for the users.
> Moreover, bumping the dependencies is also a way to force packagers to
> upgrade.
> 
> >> Users prefer to use the library packaged in their system and it will
> >> take some time before every distribution includes the required
> >> libnfnetlink_log. This patch finishes to provide a clean backward
> >> compatibility at a really low cost.
> 
> The libraries are backward compatible. We did not break the API nor ABI
> so that users with the own applications are not forced to upgrade.

I know that. The point is really not here. Work done in this area is
clearly good.

> The thing changes if we discuss about the userspace tools. I think that
> they must use the latest library release. Thus, we avoid having people
> that report problems that has been already fixed.

I really don't like this policy because it is too efficient: You will have
any report before required version of library get into the distributions
because people won't test it it there is too much work to build a test
system.
 
> >> Furthermore, I don't think a gcc warning about "unused variable" will
> >> force a lot of people to upgrade ;)
> > 
> > But a strict configure.in will :/
> 
> The gcc warning is anecdotic, it was not the main reason to bump the
> dependencies.

I know that, I was just talking about the discussed patch. But after
looking at the changelog and after using ulogd2 without problem with
older libraries, I don't think the dependencies bump was needed. If a
bug in the library was preventing ulogd2 to work correctly, I will be
the first to ask for a dependencies bump but it is far from being the
case here.

> Looking at the current state of the libraries, I think that it's the
> best for now. Later on, once they get more stable and well-tested, we
> may change this policy.

Please revert commit 3178606785161296dc5a1bd4d42d965db8b3e2cd if you
want to apply this strict policy. This code is now useless.

BR,
-- 
Eric Leblond
INL: http://www.inl.fr/
NuFW: http://www.nufw.org/

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