Re: removing libreadline from base system

David,

On Fri, Dec 2, 2011 at 3:43 PM, David O'Brien <obrien_at_freebsd.org> wrote:


> On Fri, Dec 02, 2011 at 12:57:20PM +0700, Max Khon wrote:
> > On Fri, Dec 2, 2011 at 8:55 AM, David O'Brien <obrien_at_freebsd.org>
> wrote:
> > If you go with (2) above, we'll still have *tons* of ports that want a
> > > libreadline, so we'll just end up growing a port of it and we'll wind
> up
> > > with a libreadline on the system anyway.
> >
> > Then you need to define what base system is.
>
> Eh?  Its the same definition has been for the past 17 years -- that which
> is in /usr/src.
>
> As long as there is a GPL consumer of libreadline in /usr/src, there is
> no benefit to kicking libreadline out of /usr/src.
>
> I understand the anti-GPL sentiment -- I've done my share over the years
> to help achieve a GPL-free FreeBSD.  But until there is a debugger that
> is anywhere near as capable (and mature) as GDB, we'll have a few GPL
> bits in /usr/src.
>
> I see that as OK -- its is small and contained.
>

One of the suggested alternatives (that looks more viable to me now because
of incompatibilities between libedit and libreadline) is to have
libreadline as INTERNALLIB. So that it is not exposed outside of gdb build.
So that if we ever decide to replace gdb with something else in the base
all we have to do is to svn rm gdb and friends.

In other words, I suggest to reduce the number of dependencies on base
system libreadline to just base system gdb.

E.g. we do not expose expat from our base system to the outside world
because we do not want to have unnecessary dependencies between base and
ports.

Show me a non-GPL consumer of libreadline in /usr/src and I'll do
> everything I can to have it work with libedit.
>
> When I added the libreadline compatibility to libedit, I changed all the
> non-GPL libreadline uses I knew of to libedit.
>
>
> > We have much more ports that depend on libintl or libglib2 than
> > libreadline. Should we add these libs to the base system too?
>
> Please tell me what consumer of libintl or libglib2 we have in /usr/src.


Your sentiment was about having libreadline port/package to be installed on
almost every system. We already have such packages (libintl and libglib2)
so there is nothing wrong with having libreadline as a port/package and it
does not imply that we should have it installed with the base system.

Max