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Fine packaging granularity (Was Re: pcre packages)


On Mon, 12 May 2003, Charles Wilson wrote:

> AAAAAAAGGGGGGGGGHGHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!
>
> Please don't go back here.
>
> http://www.cygwin.com/ml/cygwin-apps/2003-05/msg00060.html
>
> Corinna Vinschen wrote:
> > The archives look ok but do we really need 5 of them for a 145K package?
> >
> > Why not delivering cygpcre.dll and cygpcreposix.dll as hardlinks inside
> > of libpcre0?  As long as pcre isn't breaking backward compatibility,
> > that should be ok.  And the docs could be part of the devel package,
> > I guess.  This would drop the packages to 3 + src.
>
> Trust me, bite the bullet now.  That way, you'll have fewer problems
> when (if) pcre-5.0 breaks compatibility.  Arguably, ALL packages that
> provide DLLs and have *any* possibility of API changes should be
> packaged this way.
>
> After all, Red Hat does, for most -src.rpm's that provide libraries.
> Ditto Debian.  Splitting is good.
>
> Splitting upon initial contribution is even better, because it avoids
> the upgrade hell that these five packages are necessary to work around,
> in order to get to the state of goodness that is 'split packages'.
>
> --Chuck

Chuck,

Right now fine granularity is a matter of prudence and, possibly, personal
preference.  If we ever plan to make it a matter of policy (or, at least,
encourage it), we should allow for a better hierarchy of categories than
the one-level flat one that we currently have, IMO.  As more and more
packages start adopting this fine-grained packaging scheme, it's going to
be essential to be able to navigate through them (again IMO).  So, I
thought I'd throw this out into the open now and ask for peoples opinions.
	Igor
-- 
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