Subject: Bug#3737: xosview uses -O3 -f...

From: Ian Jackson <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 9 Jul 96 23:07 BST

Package: xosview
Version: 1.3.2-4.1

The compilation flags here are very silly.  Just -O2 would be sane;
-O3 optimises at the expense of executable size and all the -f<wotsit>
options are just silly.

Ian.

---

From: [email-masked] (joost witteveen)
Date: Wed, 10 Jul 1996 10:12:32 +0200 (MET DST)

> -O3 optimises at the expense of executable size and all the -f<wotsit>

Yes they are silly. But let's remind you that I (the maintainer) didn't
put those flags there. It's all in the package, and I didn't want
to remove all of them.

If you would look at the package itself, you'd see that it's written
completely against most of the X conventions (parses the app-defaults
files itself, for example).
This caused some problems to me already. So, in general, I'm not
very happy with the upstream xosview package, but do like the final
product (that's why I started maintaining it). If you or anybody else
likes to correct the bugs you found (and believe me, I'm going to
send you more bugreports), be my guest. Also, there's xosview-1.4.
This one doesn't start unless you've ip-accounting compiled into your
kernel, very annoying.

However I agree with the silliness of the flags, I read 
(from the Guidelines):

     It is up to the package maintainer to decide what compilation
     options are best for the package. Don't add flags for the sake
     of adding flags; only add flags if there is good reason to do so.

as also saying: "don't remove flags for the sake of removing flags".

Oh, and about the location thingy: I _was_ going to correct it,
(along with the i386 hardcoded arch), but I also sent you one or two emails
asking why other ways of correcting this bug in dpkg didn't work.
Now I realise you are probably correct in saying that it's impossible
to correct it in dpkg, but, if you think it's so serious, then I would
at least expect you to answer my emails about it.

One way that I think should work is to simply check the time stamps
of the files in the old package in step 4 in the guidelines, node
"Maintainer script arguments and how dpkg does things", and then
only delete them in step 6 if the timestamps were unchanged.

Anyway, thanks for uploading the corrected xosview package.

-- 
joost witteveen
            [email-masked]
          [email-masked]
--
Use Debian/GNU Linux!

---

From: Ian Jackson <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 16 Jul 96 02:12 BST

joost witteveen writes ("Re: Bug#3737: xosview uses -O3 -f..."):
> [Ian Jackson:]

Ahhh.

> [ general moans about the upstream package ]
>

Obviously this isn't clear enough, since I've failed to convey what is
meant :-).  Hmm, how about:

 It is up to the package maintainer to decide what compilation options
 are best for the package.  Certain binaries (such as
 computationally-intensive programs) may function better with certain
 flags (@code{-O3}, for example); feel free to use them.  Please use
 good judgment here.  Don't use flags for the sake of adding flags;
 only use flags if there is good reason to do so.  You are quite
 likely to have to override the decision of an upstream author about
 which flags to use.

Does this make things clearer ?  Basically - go ahead and override the
upstream author's flags.

In the old a.out days all GNU stuff would build statically linked by
default, because the GNU people would supply -g ...

> at least expect you to answer my emails about it.

Sorry, I didn't realise that the ball was in my court.

> only delete them in step 6 if the timestamps were unchanged.

This wouldn't really help with several of the other problems that this
kind of aliasing causes.

I think I'll just have to make do with documenting the problems.

> Anyway, thanks for uploading the corrected xosview package.

You're welcome.  I'm sorry if I offended you.

Ian.