Re: sparse as a compiler front-end

[Jeff Garzik <jeff@garzik.org>]

Matt Domsch wrote:
> On Sat, Nov 11, 2006 at 08:45:41PM -0500, Jeff Garzik wrote:
>> Matt Domsch wrote:
>>> On Sat, Nov 11, 2006 at 04:54:08PM -0500, Jeff Garzik wrote:
>>>> I see that sparse made it into Fedora Extras, so that 'yum install' 
>>>> automatically pulls it down for me.  Yay!  Thanks, Matt.
>>>>
>>>> Can libsparse.a and necessary includes be packaged as well?
>>> .a or .so?  The .so just got dropped from the standard sparse 'make
>> Doesn't matter to me...  Something is better than nothing.  With 
>> sparse's license, .a is no big deal.
> 
> Fedora Extras strongly discourages shipping and using .a if only to
> ensure that any security issue uncovered can be addressed without
> always rebuilding all downstream dependent apps.  Not too likely a
> problem with a tool like sparse, but always a concern.
> 
> The .so would need to start being versioned, and care paid to bump the
> version as the ABIs change.

Or alteratively we could recognize that sparse is a bit of an unusual 
lib.  With the library likely to be changing rapidly, caring about ABIs 
at this early stage probably isn't in anybody's best interests.

	Jeff