Re: Update dependencies tarball for 1.5 release

On 9/16/07, Max Bowsher <maxb1@ukf.net> wrote:
> Mark Phippard wrote:
> > There was a brief discussion on IRC last week where a user was using
> > APR 0.9.12 and Sussman wondered why any new user would not just use
> > 1.2.x from the start. One reason is that our dependencies tarball
> > includes 0.9.x.
> >
> > Should we change this for the 1.5 release? I believe the binary
> > dependency issue has been raised in the past for a reason to not do
> > this, but wouldn't the people most likely be to affected by this
> > problem be using an APR from their distro?
>
> IIUC, our stated reason for not changing from APR 0.9.x to 1.x in the
> dependencies tarball so far has been that since we expose APR types in
> our public APIs, it is an API change for Subversion to do so.
>
> In practise, most distros have already dealt with this hurdle, and
> build-from-source people will only be disrupted by this if one of the
> following holds true:
>
> (1) They are also using something which compiles and links against
> Subversion itself - rare, I would think.
>
> (2) They are using mod_dav_svn with Apache 2.0.x - a distinct possibility.
>
> However, with the growing popularity of Apache 2.2.x, my opinion is that
> it is acceptable for us to change the bundled dependency APR version if
> we document the issue in the release notes. We can further mitigate the
> problem if we fix configure to NOT use the bundled APR/APR-util when
> --with-apxs is explicitly or implicitly in operation, using the
> APR/APR-util already forming part of the references Apache installation
> in that case. That's a change I think we should have done long ago in
> any case.

My thinking is that someone building from source can always get the
2.0.x sources. For me the main issue is that our dependencies tarball
sends a subtle message to the world as to what we think the
"preferred" dependencies are. I do not think we would choose APR 0.9
over 1.2, all other things being equal.

The other question is Neon. Can we update to 0.26.4 or even 0.27.1?
We have at least one open issue that essentially requires us to do
this in order to close it. Like I said, we could just have DJ Heap do
this himself when doing the Win32 binaries but I think it makes sense
to update the dependencies if we know a newer version works better
than 0.25.5.

-- 
Thanks
Mark Phippard
http://markphip.blogspot.com/
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