Re: i2c-tools: Discussion points about future library

[Martin Mokrejs <mmokrejs-08dBlVkRsZWoiTQjSSYKZesEoJ4y9sgM@public.gmane.org>]

Hi Jean,

Jean Delvare wrote:
> Hi Martin,
> 
> Please don't top-post.
> 
> On Wed, 04 Apr 2012 21:41:08 +0200, Martin Mokrejs wrote:
>> Hi,
>>   did you Google for it? Looks "libi2c" is already existing.
> 
> Yes I did.
> 
>> http://www.rtems.com/ml/rtems-users/2008/march/msg00033.html
> 
> RTEMS is an operating system on its own. We don't care what libraries
> they have and what they named them, just as they don't care what
> libraries Linux has and names them.
> 
>> http://packages.ubuntu.com/search?keywords=libi2c-dev
> 
> As you know, Ubuntu is derived from Debian, and I did mention in my
> original post that Debian had a package named libi2c-dev. Meanwhile
> Mark Brown explained that this is the development package for an
> hypothetical libi2c package which doesn't (yet exist.) So I am aware of
> this one and it is compatible with my effort.
> 
>> http://opensource.katalix.com/libi2c/
> 
> First time I hear of this. They never contacted me (nor the linux-i2c
> list) about it, and more importantly, it doesn't seem to be packaged by
> any major Linux distribution. Their API is different from what the
> kernel and i2c-tools use. I can understand that they developed
> something given the lack of a proper library for the past 10 years, but
> they should have discussed it with the community to make it more
> visible. I'm not saying Katalix is bad, they did work with the
> community on other topics, but in this specific case they did not, and
> that's unfortunate.
> 
> I'm not sure if they still maintain that code, BTW, this seems to be an
> old page, if I go to http://www.katalix.com, I can't return to that
> page.
> 
> I understand that having two libraries by the same name will cause some
> confusion, but OTOH the parallel implementations and resulting
> confusion already exist, I'm only making the confusion more formal.

Yes, that will be also a nightmare for distro maintainers, having same header
and library files installed simultaneously on a system, users having problems
which one to install ...


> 
>>   I would also search for the header filenames and invent such names
>> which will not clash with any existing. Same for "-li2c" or
>> whatever will apear on the ld line.
> 
> No, sorry. I'm not going to invent a fancy name to make sure it isn't
> clashing with something out there. If anyone wanted their code to
> become the standard Linux i2c library, they should have pushed it to
> major Linux distributions. Nobody did AFAICS.

No, sorry, don't take me wrong and not personally, at all witrh the following.
Once I read somewhere on the internet a rant from some software developer who
created program "foo". Later on, someone else decided to create a package
"foo2" and the original author commented that it was "nasty", as it appears
"foo2" is an improved version of "foo".

Back to our case, I find it "nasty" as well to say, now, X years later we have
our own library and will use exactly this name, as we don't care about you all.
We are the "official" ...

I hope I will not start a flame with this answer. Personally, I do not mind
but I just saw too many times packages using same library and header names.
Last time it was, that glibc since some newer version had a header file
of some name which some app used since years. I convinced the app author
to change his header name as it seemed more feasible than convincing glibc
people to take their decision back.

But you just asked beforehand, so I wanted to tell you my opinion. I would
contact Katalix to discuss, that would be fair thing to do.

Best,
Martin