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Date: Sun, 20 Dec 2020 15:35:35 +0100 (CET)
From: Roland Lutz <rlutz AT hedmen DOT org>
To: "Glenn (glimrick AT epilitimus DOT com) [via geda-user AT delorie DOT com]" <geda-user AT delorie DOT com>
Subject: Re: [geda-user] Problem with Guile 2.2.4 dependency for gEDA
 1.10.1.
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On Sat, 19 Dec 2020, Glenn (glimrick AT epilitimus DOT com) [via 
geda-user AT delorie DOT com] wrote:
> that someone at some point had what was considered a good reason to set 
> the required versions where they were

That's a quite optimistic assumption.  I'd rather assume that the first 
developer to add a library set the minimum version number to whatever they 
were using, and no-one has bothered to update it since then.

> and things have been building without issue with those version numbers.

The thing is, they haven't.  For example, there has been a patch sitting 
in the stable branch for a while which set the minimum required version of 
Guile from 2.0.0 to 2.0.10.  gEDA/gaf 1.10.0 doesn't actually work with an 
older version of Guile; even though the configure check doesn't complain, 
the sources won't build because a newer API function is missing.

> So set them back to where they were and then only increase them 
> when/as necessary

Exactly this is the problem.

> IMO a bug release is *not* a good place to be increasing dependency
> versions, unless it is to fix a bug.

This bug has been in launchpad for over a year:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/geda/+bug/1855308

> A dependency upgrade should be a minor version increase at the least 
> since it means the code is no longer backwards compatible.

It never was; the required version information was simply not updated.

Roland

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