From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Martin Mokrejs Subject: Re: i2c-tools: Discussion points about future library Date: Thu, 05 Apr 2012 11:42:10 +0200 Message-ID: <4F7D68F2.4040106@fold.natur.cuni.cz> References: <20120404160113.2295c636@endymion.delvare> <20120404174158.GA19773@sirena.org.uk> <20120404212323.59053a1f@endymion.delvare> <4F7CA3D4.8000104@fold.natur.cuni.cz> <20120405094910.1dcc4779@endymion.delvare> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Return-path: In-Reply-To: <20120405094910.1dcc4779-R0o5gVi9kd7kN2dkZ6Wm7A@public.gmane.org> Sender: linux-i2c-owner-u79uwXL29TY76Z2rM5mHXA@public.gmane.org To: Jean Delvare Cc: Mark Brown , Linux I2C , Aurelien Jarno List-Id: linux-i2c@vger.kernel.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