Re: [Bug-readline] build failure with readline 6.3 and python, samba and parted

[Chet Ramey]

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On 4/10/14, 9:11 AM, Max Horn wrote:
> 
> On 03.03.2014, at 20:19, Chet Ramey <address@hidden> wrote:
> 
>> On 3/3/14 1:04 PM, Juergen Daubert wrote:
>>> Hello,
>>>
>>> after installing the new readline 6.3 I rebuild a couple of packages 
>>> on my system (Linux, gcc 4.7.3, glibc 2.16.0) and get errors for the 
>>> following:
>>
>> Yes, those old-style function typedefs have been deprecated for a couple
>> of releases now.  I finally removed them in readline-6.3.
> 
> Late reply, but: This is a bit unfortunate, as it constitutes an API 
> breakage. I just got a bug report about this because me updating the Fink 
> readline6 package to 6.3.3 broke our python package. So now I'll have to 
> patch the header to add back the typedef.

I understand that fink, like bash and readline, is an open-source project
run by primarily volunteers.  However, I'm disappointed that this slipped
through the testing releases.

> Thing is, while this typedef may have been deprecated for a couple of 
> releases, there was no real means for client code to notice this, was there? 

In general, this is always the case.  This is the reason to distribute
testing versions: so maintainers with access to other systems and packages
can see whether or not things break in a way that requires readline to be
changed before a final release.

I suppose other than the periodic complaints about readline `polluting' the
application's namespace, there really is no way to keep up unless you pay
attention to development versions.

It's a hard problem.  I recently encountered it when a change to bash, made
three years ago, available in development git snapshots since, and
released as part of bash-4.3, violated some of the assumptions the bash-
completion package makes.  You'd wish that it had been discovered before
release.

> 
> So, perhaps they could be added back for now, but with a twist: add 
> __attribute__((deprecated)); to them, at least for compilers that support it 
> (gcc, clang). And also say clearly that these will be released in readline 7 
> (which will be free to break API and ABI, I assume).

This is an interesting approach.  I will try it and release it as a
readline patch.

Chet
- -- 
``The lyf so short, the craft so long to lerne.'' - Chaucer
                 ``Ars longa, vita brevis'' - Hippocrates
Chet Ramey, ITS, CWRU    address@hidden    http://cnswww.cns.cwru.edu/~chet/
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