tech-pkg: Re: "legacy" qt3 packages?
Subject: Re: "legacy" qt3 packages?
To: Greg Troxel
<gdt@ir.bbn.com>
From: Geert Hendrickx
<ghen@telenet.be>
List: tech-pkg
Date: 02/27/2006 15:11:40
On Mon, Feb 27, 2006 at 08:54:26AM -0500, Greg Troxel wrote:
> Geert Hendrickx <ghen@netbsd.org> writes:
> > I'm upgrading editors/texmaker to the latest version, which uses qt4, and
> > I'm sure other programs will gradually be upgraded to qt4 as well. Would
> > it make sense if we keep "legacy" versions of these programs (using qt3)
> > in pkgsrc? Say e.g. editors/texmaker-qt3 (similar to *-gtk1 packages).
>
> First, I presume qt4 and qt3 can both be installed.
Correct. They install in a different QTDIR.
> I'd say that if it's reasonable to want to run the old version, it makes
> sense to keep a qt3 version of the package if the maintainer has cycles
> to do it.
I'd see no reason for running an older version of texmaker, apart from qt3-
vs-qt4. I don't know either whether there is any good reason not to run
qt4, it was just a question that popped up in my mind (just like we still
maintain some -gtk1 packages).
> But if the qt3 version is no longer maintained (security fixes, etc.), or
> one can make the statement "Discounting people who just object to having
> qt4 on their systems, no one would rationally wish to refrain from
> upgrading to the new version, then probably the older version should be
> dropped.
I just noticed the last qt3 version of texmaker is not available for
download anymore, so in this case it probably makes most sense to just drop
it.
> A perhaps similar situation persisted with guile 1.4 and 1.6 for a long
> time. But that's a harder situation because of library dependencies -
> and would argue for keeping qt3 around, not building programs against it.
> Gnucash was changed to use guile 1.6, but I gather qt3->qt4 is such a
> change one needs new versions of the qt-using packages, not just
> compiling it against a different version.
I don't know about guile, but indeed qt3->qt4 is not just a matter of
recompiling; the programs have to be ported. Though I understood that qt4
has some qt3 compatibility layer to make it possible to build older apps
with qt4, but pkgsrc doesn't support that at the moment (should it?).
Geert