Fw: Re: FCEUX

[Andrea Musuruane]

Hi John,

On Mon, Jan 18, 2010 at 9:55 AM, John Arntz <jsarntz at yahoo.com> wrote:
> I was able to contact someone from upstream, and I got the reply below. What is the proper way to proceed if upstream is unwilling to use the system library? Should we drop lua support all together? I know you said the lua features are what make fceux stand out as a good emulator, but I'm not sure we can have it, if upstream is unwilling to use system libraries.

Your only choice is to patch fceux yourself to use system lua. I know
this is a PITA, but we have good reasons for this. I'll explain them
below.


> --- On Sat, 1/16/10, Matthew Gambrell <mgambrell at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> From: Matthew Gambrell <mgambrell at gmail.com>
>> Subject: Re: FCEUX
>> To: "John Arntz" <jsarntz at yahoo.com>
>> Date: Saturday, January 16, 2010, 2:23 PM
>> For issue 1, nothing I can do about that,
>> although we are currently considering how to better
>> communicate with people since mailing lists are apparently
>> not reliable. I'll let you know when we change
>> anything.
>>
>> For issue 2, I suggest you investigate the way lua is
>> commonly used and what it is intended for, specifically the
>> way it is meant to be compile-time customized and embedded
>> in programs. Your distro's policy is not applicable to
>> lua, and if they are applying it, then they are wrong, and
>> you need to argue with them about that.  In general, what
>> are we supposed to do if we are using a library that has
>> been heavily modified? Wouldn't we have no choice but to
>> drop it into our source tree?

The reason because we want to use system libraries is that it is much
better to have just a single copy of a library instead of having
1,000's. What if a bug (or a security bug) is found in this library?
In the first case you have to update it only in one place. In the
latter case, well, welcome to hell.

Moreover, as I already said, they are using the same exact upstream
lua, but they use a "private" header file that it is not supposed to
be used by external applications.

>> For issue 3, this hasn't stopped any number of other
>> distros from packaging fceux.  Perhaps you should see how
>> theyve dealt with it. In fceux, it is not such a big deal
>> since there are only two applications really, but what are
>> larger projects with more buildable targets in their source
>> tree supposed to do? Cut a dozen tarballs out of the source
>> tree?

What other distros? For example Debian uses the same rule we use about
bundled libraries and there is no fceux in Debian.

I cannot find a single RPM based distro that ships fceux:
http://rpmfind.net/linux/rpm2html/search.php?query=fceux

Bye,

Andrea.