Re: gobject-introspection typelibs and shared libraries

[Federico Beffa <beffa@ieee.org>]

>On Thu, Jan 15, 2015 at 10:42:42PM +0100, Ludovic Courtès wrote:
>> If there’s consensus to install the symlink, that’s fine with me (if we
>> take that route, I would also suggest submitting a patch upstream so GCC
>> installs the symlink.)
>
>I am not in favour of adding such a symlink on our own and would rather
>keep with the standard builds as we usually do when there is no compelling
>reason to do otherwise.

That's interesting.

Consider that:

* such a symlink would have spared much frustration to Mark (see
earlier posts in this thread).

* It is likely that the update of 'gobject-introspection' to a newer
version would not have caused problems (see earlier posts in this
thread and https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/guix-devel/2015-01/msg00196.html).
And, from Ludovic's comment: "So far we’ve resisted the temptation.
...", I understand that there are a few other packages which would
benefit.

* Up to now nobody could point out any *technical* drawback. (And if
we find one later, we can always revert.)

Even if an action if beneficial to, say, 1 in 100 packages without
drawbacks to the other ones and the fix of that single package is
easy, it is still worth doing. I do not see a large number of people
contributing to this project. It is therefore important to minimize
the likelihood of a required manual intervention to fix problems.
Maintaining 1000's of software packages is time consuming!

It would be the *GUIX project* the one who would benefit if decisions
would be taken based on technical arguments and merits instead of
feelings or the mood of the day.

Fede