Re: [linux-minidisc] using libusal for scsi access

[Michael Karcher <Michael.Karcher@fu-berlin.de>]

Am Dienstag, den 04.05.2010, 19:38 +0200 schrieb Adrian Glaubitz:
> Can you post your patch again? What did you change to get the shared
> libraries working?
I'm wondering whether making a shared library out of libusal is a good
idea at the time being. Making a shared library is kind-of a promise you
won't break ABI. So this definitely would need to be coordinated with
the maintainers of cdrkit (supposing that it is actively maintained - I
didn't check). At least at the moment where we need to patch libusal to
get it do what we want, we are in no position enforce the world to use
our version of it.

On the other hand, having a SCSI abstraction layer available under a
sensible license for use by open source projects is really a good idea.
I would suggest to build a static library first and even start having it
integrated in the linux-minidisc project (just as we handle libhimd). I
hope we can get upstream interested in shipping static libraries and
their development headers (static libraries only need API stability
which is not that much a burden as ABI stability). As soon as upstream
distributes a working static library (only a -dev package in debian
speech), we can start using that, and if they decide to ship a shared
library, it's also no problem for us to switch over using the shared
library. Still it should be upstreams' choice what dll is distributed as
libusal.dll, libusal0.dll or libusal-0.dll, as the DLL Hell situation on
Windows XP makes it impossible (I think, the new side-by-side assembly
stuff probably changed the situation) to have to different versions of
libusal.dll loaded at the same time - int different(!) programs, I mean!

> If you have some time, would you mind checking the patch that Thomas
> mentions here as well? I guess that six eyes will see more than four
> eyes here ;).
OK, will do so.

Regards,
  Michael Karcher