On Sun, Jan 16, 2011 at 10:16:37PM +0100, Thomas Moschny wrote:
2011/1/16 Jon Ciesla <limb(a)jcomserv.net>:
> Would you be so kind as to file BZs against midori and xiphos indicating
> that they either need to switch to using system waf or file a Trac with
> FPC for an exception if there's a really good reason to bundle?
Could do that, but I think we should ask FPC for a general exception.
waf is intended to be bundled, and its api changes from time to time.
waf's upstream even officially discourages installing it system-wide
(and has removed the installation routine in later releases). Some
people might find an rpm handy nevertheless, that's why we still
package it, while e.g. Debian has stopped packaging it. Forcing our
package maintainers to use system's waf (which might be a on different
version than that embedded in their source tars) might put extra
burden on them and is probably not worth the effort - we are talking
about a build system, not a run-time lib.
It's possible that it could be shown to be a copylib:
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Packaging:No_Bundled_Libraries#Copylibs
But waf does make periodic releases so that might not be the right
exception. If you could draw parallels between the autotools and waf, that
might be a way to look at it. I'll note, though, that the autotools have
a layer that is used to create the build scripts which should not be bundled
(autoconf, automake, and the like), and a layer that is the actual build
scripts (configure.ac, Makefile.am, etc) which are bundled so we'd need to
figure out if waf should fit that same mold.
-Toshio