On Tue, Aug 28, 2012 at 8:17 PM, Debarshi Ray <rishi.is(a)lostca.se> wrote:
The update to guile-2.x has been blocked for almost 1.5 years now:
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=678238
Long story short, existing programs are not ready to use guile-2.x, while newer
versions of aiselriot (part of GNOME) need it. Creating a compat-guile or a
guile2 package can be one way forward.
I don't know anything about the guile API and it's compatibility - so
just a general note:
As a general ideal, there should be only one version of each
software/library in the distribution (the rationale for prohibition on
bundling libraries mostly applies here as well). The whole purpose of
the distribution is to integrate various separate upstream projects
into a single well-working OS; therefore, again as a general ideal,
the people working on the distribution should actively participate in
making it possible to use only a single version, and in getting this
done (by sending patches upstream to port uses to a new version of the
library, or perhaps by adding backward-compatibility facilities to the
library).
It may happen that it is easier long-term to maintain both versions of
the package than to unify all users on a single version - I wouldn't
expect this to be the default, but it can happen.
http://www.gnu.org/software/guile/manual/html_node/Parallel-Installations...
suggests that guile assumes parallel installability - while I can
google this out, I can't tell whether this implies anything about the
support of the 1.x branch, or about other relevant aspects.
Mirek