[Pkg-crosswire-devel] libsword6 and libsword7 in peaceful coexistence... only if we separate out the utilities

[Matthew Talbert]

> I suspect the right solution going forward is to package the utilities
> independently from the library itself.  In reality most users of
> libsword6 or libsword7 will never use or care about tools like imp2vs or
> mod2osis anyway, and logically these tools are not part of the library,
> they are mostly specialist tools intended for use by module developers
> (at least from what I have figured out about them so far!).

> Should we be creating libsword7 with *just* the library, and a new
> binary package libsword-tools or libsword-utils with all the module
> converter tools in it?  That would allow library coexistence.  Module
> developers are likely to want to use the latest set of tools, not be
> developing new modules using an old library, I would guess, so not
> allowing multiple sets of the tools to coexist is probably OK?
>
> How do we handle tools currently installed by libsword7 that *are* in
> fact somewhat general purpose end user tools... I think installmgr
> qualifies as such?  Do we need to do something like install as
> installmgr6 and installmgr7 and use the alternatives subsystem so that
> people can pick which set of the tools they want active at a give time?
>  Is that overkill?  Do real end users actually use installmgr?  Is it
> exec'ed from any of the front-end packages, or do they do their own thing?
>
> Creating a new libsword-tools binary package isn't hard to do,
> obviously, but I'm not going to do it unilaterally... your thoughts and
> comments, please, team!  For example, could/should we put the tools into
> libsword-dev instead, rather than create a new binary libsword-tools
> package?  Or is there a better way entirely, that allows multiple sword
> library versions to coexist?
>
> Jonathan

I really can't comment on whether another package is needed, but I
have a few comments about how the tools are used.

The module development tools are used only by module developers and
they should *not* be using old versions. In fact, I think right now
the versions provided by sword-1.5.11 aren't really recommended (yes,
there needs to be a new release).

installmgr, diatheke, and mkfastmod would probably all qualify as
end-user tools, but all of the functionality in them is superseded by
the front-ends. These tools also change very little from version to
version.

Matthew