status of libgit.a

Dear Git folks,


Am Donnerstag, den 19.02.2009, 09:24 +0000 schrieb Gerrit Pape:

On Wed, Feb 18, 2009 at 09:10:02AM -0800, Marc Oscar Singer wrote:

quoted

Gerrit Pape wrote:

[…]

quoted

quoted

It depends on upstream.  Back then, Junio asked to not provide such a
library package in Debian, and I respect that.  There've been some plans
and effort to stabilize the lib in the past, but I'm not sure about the
status.
 

Would it be a compromise to provide libgit.a as a static library for 
until it stabilizes?

That's not the compromise, that's the option, I don't know any plans
about a shared library.  The git-core-dev package that was available for
short included such a static library.

You really need to talk to upstream if you want this libgit.a.

could you please give an update on the status of libgit.a. For example
cgit still could not be packaged yet for Debian [1] because of this bug
[2].

cgit is used by a lot of projects out there, so I am wondering if the
current libgit.a can be released in its current state.

By the way, is there a web site/page for libgit.a?


Thanks and sorry if I got something wrong,

Paul


[1] http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=515793
[2] http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=407722

On Sun, Mar 07, 2010 at 11:27:35AM +0100, Paul Menzel [off-list ref] wrote:

quoted

You really need to talk to upstream if you want this libgit.a.

could you please give an update on the status of libgit.a. For example
cgit still could not be packaged yet for Debian [1] because of this bug
[2].

cgit is used by a lot of projects out there, so I am wondering if the
current libgit.a can be released in its current state.

libgit.a is not a public library, so it will never have a stable
API/ABI. There is a libgit2 project which tries to do this, but it's far
from complete:

http://repo.or.cz/w/libgit2.git

By the way, is there a web site/page for libgit.a?

No, there isn't.

I think the only sane solution is what Fedora does as well:

http://cvs.fedoraproject.org/viewvc/devel/cgit/

When cgit-1.2.3 is released, have a look at its Makefile, check what Git
version does it want and add the relevant Git source to the cgit source
package.

[ I remember Debian did not support having multiple upstream sources /
one source package, I hope this is no longer the situation. ;-) ]

On Sun, Mar 07, 2010 at 11:27:35AM +0100, Paul Menzel wrote:

could you please give an update on the status of libgit.a. For example
cgit still could not be packaged yet for Debian [1] because of this bug
[2].

cgit is used by a lot of projects out there, so I am wondering if the
current libgit.a can be released in its current state.

By the way, is there a web site/page for libgit.a?

libgit.a has never been meant to use outside of Git. It was created just
to assist with the building process, and there is no clear defined API.
So, using libgit.a outside of Git is no different than copying source
files and using them in another project.

AFAIK, there is no plan to create a stable API for the existing libgit.a
Another project (libgit2) started some time ago to create a Git library
with a stable API, but it does not share much code with Git, and so far
it provides only basic functionality and has very few contributors, who
are also busy with other projects. So, in no way it can be considered as
a replacement of existing libgit.a.

On the other hand, libgit.a includes plumbing functions, which may be
considered as stable API. So, if cgit uses only those functions just to
avoid fork(), it makes sense; but it should be done carefully, because
libgit.a can call exit() on error. It may be not a problem for cgit, but
it is just another reason why libgit.a cannot be considered as a general
purpose library that provides Git functionality...


Dmitry

On 3/7/10, Miklos Vajna [off-list ref] wrote:

 I think the only sane solution is what Fedora does as well:

 http://cvs.fedoraproject.org/viewvc/devel/cgit/

 When cgit-1.2.3 is released, have a look at its Makefile, check what Git
 version does it want and add the relevant Git source to the cgit source
 package.

Or bundle cgit with git.git as a subsystem, with Lars as maintainer.
-- 
Duy

Hi,

On Sun, 7 Mar 2010, Paul Menzel wrote:

Am Donnerstag, den 19.02.2009, 09:24 +0000 schrieb Gerrit Pape:

quoted

On Wed, Feb 18, 2009 at 09:10:02AM -0800, Marc Oscar Singer wrote:

quoted

Gerrit Pape wrote:

[…]

quoted

quoted

quoted

It depends on upstream.  Back then, Junio asked to not provide such 
a library package in Debian, and I respect that.  There've been 
some plans and effort to stabilize the lib in the past, but I'm not 
sure about the status.
 

Would it be a compromise to provide libgit.a as a static library for 
until it stabilizes?

That's not the compromise, that's the option, I don't know any plans 
about a shared library.  The git-core-dev package that was available 
for short included such a static library.

You really need to talk to upstream if you want this libgit.a.

could you please give an update on the status of libgit.a.

There had been some people who worked towards a re-entrant libgit.a (read: 
non-die()ing in library functions). But there were too many others, so 
that effort stopped.

The most likely route for people needing libgit.a would be libgit2:

http://git.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/SoC2010Ideas#Complete_libgit2

For example cgit still could not be packaged yet for Debian [1] because 
of this bug [2].

cgit should not depend on libgit.a, as it is linked statically anyway.

Ciao,
Dscho