Re: On packaging old versions of libraries

[Roel Janssen <roel@gnu.org>]

Mike Gerwitz writes:

> There is a game my kids love playing named Secret Mayro
> Chronicles.  Unfortunately, it's been unmaintained since 2012, and it
> was removed from Debian because it is no longer compatible with newer
> versions of libraries they package.[0]  There is a maintained fork of
> the game, but it's quite different from the original (intentionally).
>
> I have the option of compiling it using old libraries (I would have to
> compile the old libraries' dependencies as well, as needed), upgrade the
> game by backporting changes from the fork (which I honestly doubt I have
> the time for right now, but I'll look into it), or run the game within a
> VM/container running an old Debian version.
>
> I'm going to look into what is required to backport, but if I decided to
> go the first route, I would probably use Guix.  Would such a
> contribution be accepted considering it packages older libraries, which
> would add some cruft?  At the least, I would have to compile CEGUI0.7,
> but that might need older versions of libraries itself to compile.
>
>
> [0]: https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=812096

Regardless of whether older versions of libraries would be accepted
upstream, you can also keep them in a separate repository or directory
and use the environment variable GUIX_PACKAGE_PATH to include them in
your Guix.

Kind regards,
Roel Janssen