About ProgressReport and msn-pecan

[Ethan Blanton]

Felipe Contreras spake unto us the following wisdom:
> When you think about it projects increase their dependencies when they
> need something new. Why? Because there are bug-fixes, improvements, it
> just makes everyone's life easier.
> 
> Also, it's a sign of respect to the GLib developers. What would you
> think about Adium developers if they used a libpurple from 2002? Of
> course, it's different, GLib *is* widely used.

No, this logic is deeply and fundamentally flawed.  This is not a case
of Pidgin *requiring* an old GLib, merely continuing to build agaist
an old glib.  There is no disrespect here (if anything it's respect --
old glib remains good enough for us even after all this time!), and
there is no burden upon the maintainers of glib.

> Usually if some lame user can live with a library that is from 2002 he
> can very well live with an old version of Pidgin.
> 
> You are worrying about a potential user that doesn't exist. If I was
> using a stone age system, I would compile a new GLib on /opt/glib, and
> export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/opt/glib/lib; voilà.

No, you are wishing away a user which *does* exist.  We have had the
debate of moving our glib and gtk+ requirements forward on multiple
occasions, and on each occasion, a real user has stepped forward and
made a compelling case for support back as far as 2.0.0.  As John
said, we will probably be sliding this forward a bit for libpurple
3.0.0, precisely because glib 2.0.0 is so old.

> Anyway, I just added support for GLib 2.0.0 in msn-pecan, and now it's
> uglier, but I guess when you mess with libpurple that's what you are
> looking for anyway.

This is more of that combative attitude you claimed you don't display.
If you want to have different requirements from libpurple, that's
fine, we aren't stopping you -- but if you want to play the game of
producing good, stable software which is useful for a large range of
distributions and platforms, you'll have to work a little harder.

Ethan

-- 
The laws that forbid the carrying of arms are laws [that have no remedy
for evils].  They disarm only those who are neither inclined nor
determined to commit crimes.
		-- Cesare Beccaria, "On Crimes and Punishments", 1764
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