Outdated Linphone packets

[Bernhard Schmidt]

Hi,

>> - a linphone-sdk source tar.gz package containing all source code for
>> libraries, with a cmake script that builds everything in one pass, but
>> using debian included dependencies for our externals (soci, xerces,
>> opus, libvpx, mbedtls...). Everything goes to a DESTDIR-like root-fs.
>> - a linphone-desktop tar.gz package contaning the new QT5 graphical user
>> interface, that depends on libraries built by linphone-sdk.
>> Would this be helpful and sufficient for Debian developers to
>> - create debian packages for all linphone subprojects (bctoolbox, belr,
>> ortp, mediastreamer2, belle-sip, belcard, liblinphone)
> 
> Sounds okay, but please do not include checkouts of the foreign modules
> into your tar.gz. Even if the actual compilation would be against the
> system libraries, carrying those foreign projects in the source tarball
> requires needless copyright examination. Or repacking, both is cumbersome.

Forgot to add:

Something that is also very important for Debian (and most other
distributions) is proper maintenance of shared libraries. There can only
be one version of each library in a release, so all reverse depencies
need to be built against it. When there are foreign projects using these
libraries, they need to be able to do it in a stable way. This means

- Don't easily change the API, because it might break existing projects
to build against the new version. This would be a blocker for inclusion

Actually AFAIR this prevented having an updated linphone version in
Stretch (Debian 9, released three years ago) because kopete did not
build against the new version of mediastreamer, which blocked the update.

- Don't break the library ABI. Don't drop or change exported symbols. If
absolutely necessary bump the SONAME.

See https://wiki.debian.org/UpstreamGuide for more information.

This is less of a concern if only the linphone-ecosystem uses the
libraries, but right now there is at least kopete using libmediastreamer
and libortp. If this is something you are absolutely unwilling to
support, please document this and get in touch with Kopete upstream to
get this dropped.

Bernhard