Re: [gpsd-dev] withdrawal of libgpsd, gpsd.h?

[Eric S. Raymond]

Greg Troxel <address@hidden>:
> (I've been away from gpsd for a long time.)
> 
> I'm updating pkgsrc from 2.96 (!) to 3.18.  This is mostly
> straightforward, but I have one significant question.
> 
> Compared to the set of files installed before, I see that the following
> are not installed:
> 
>   include/gpsd.h
>   lib/libgpsd.la
>   lib/pkgconfig/libgpsd.pc
>   man/man3/libgpsd.3
> 
> I looked at NEWS, and I don't see any mention of the withdrawal; perhaps
> they were always an implementation detail and specified as not usable.
> I don't need an explanation and don't mean to nitpick about NEWS -- I
> just want to make sure that this is an intended change and not a
> packaging bug to fix.
> 
> (And, gpsd 3.18 runs on NetBSD/8 amd64 with one of these:
>   umodem0: u-blox AG - www.u-blox.com (0x1546) u-blox GNSS receiver (0x1a8), 
> rev 1.10/3.01, addr 7, iclass 2/2
> using xgps, but the NTP shm mechanism isn't working.  I'll ask again if
> I can't debug it.)

That was intentional.

I wrote libgpsd with the idea that the packet handler might someday
have a use as other than as the engine of gpsd under a thin wrapper of
socket plumbing, but there was absolutely *zero* demand for this. So
I decided to stop exposing that interface.

The libgpsd(3) interface still exists internally because it's good factoring.
It's just no longer exported.
-- 
                <a href="http://www.catb.org/~esr/";>Eric S. Raymond</a>