On Sun, 2009-04-05 at 22:37 -0400, David Nalley wrote:
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A number of PHP web applications have the nasty habit of bundling
libraries with their packages.
Upstream's logic for doing so (that shared hosting might not have
access to all of the libraries in question and leave the user with no
way to install the libraries) at least seems plausible at first
glance.
However, the question I bring is how best to deal with these, at least
two options jump out at me:
1. Patch source to point to the library installed on the system rather
than the bundled
OR
2. symlink from the bundled location to the system library.
#1 strikes me as cleaner, but also more difficult to maintain.
#2 strikes me as dead easy, but also a bit more hackish.
I've talked to several people individually, and none knew of a
preference, hence I beg the wisdom of the list.
Ideally, #0: explain the situation to upstream and have them ship an
alternative version. This is done, for instance, for roundcubemail,
which has a 'full-fat' download with copies of libraries included, and a
'dependent' download which doesn't include any dependencies and is set
to look for system wide copies. Naturally, distributions use the
'dependent' tarball.
--
Adam Williamson
Fedora QA Community Monkey
IRC: adamw | Fedora Talk: adamwill AT fedoraproject DOT org
http://www.happyassassin.net