Bug 430545

SDL-1.2.13-2.fc8 has been submitted as an update for Fedora 8

SDL-1.2.13-2.fc8 has been pushed to the Fedora 8 testing repository.  If problems still persist, please make note of it in this bug report.
 If you want to test the update, you can install it with 
 su -c 'yum --enablerepo=updates-testing update SDL'.  You can provide feedback for this update here: http://admin.fedoraproject.org/updates/F8/FEDORA-2008-1225

Imho the SDL main package should Requires: the -static subpackage util F10 is
released, because this splitup (or removal of the static libraries from
SDL-devel) is a major change, that should only happen within distro upgrades and
mentioned in the release notes.

Is it possible to patch SDL to have a dynamic library for SDLmain? I do not
understand why there is a dynamic library for SDL and only a static for SDLmain,
but I'm just a user...

SDL-1.2.13-2.fc8 has been pushed to the Fedora 8 stable repository.  If problems still persist, please make note of it in this bug report.

> Is it possible to patch SDL to have a dynamic library for SDLmain? I do not
> understand why there is a dynamic library for SDL and only a static for
> SDLmain, but I'm just a user...

libSDLmain contains the main function. Its purpose is to wrap the actual main 
function of the program (which gets renamed to SDL_main) with SDL error 
handling (the parachute system). So main gets renamed to SDL_main in the main 
program and libSDLmain contains the real main function the linker sees. I guess 
this doesn't work with a shared library.

In any case, this is still broken in Rawhide. Libraries which are static only 
should be provided in the -devel package, not -static.

See also bug 434317 for a build failure caused by this.

One big request (requirement) in the package review of SDL was to remove the
static libraries from the devel package. I have made an extra static package to
not loose them.

That makes sense for the libraries with both a static and a dynamic version 
(e.g. libSDL.*), but libSDLmain.a is _only_ static.

Should this be discussed on the fedora-packaging-list maybe? Or brought to the 
attention of the Fedora Packaging Committee? (Their next meeting will be 13 
days from now.)

The review guidelines are pretty clear about this imho:
- MUST: Static libraries must be in a -static package.

The reason for this I read on the mailinglist is, that this allows to track
where static libraries are still used easily, to make it easier to remove them.

But the guidelines also say:
> When a package only provides static libraries you can place all the files in
> the *-devel subpackage. When doing this you also have to have a virtual
> Provide for the static package: 
>  %package devel
>  Provides: foo-static = %{version}-%{release}

The last part obviously isn't possible here because this package contains 
_both_ libraries which are available as shared and static _and_ a static-only 
library!

They also say:
> If a library you depend on _only_ provides a static version your package can
> link against it provided that you BuildRequire the *-devel subpackage.

The only way BRing SDL-devel rather than SDL-static is going to work here is if 
libSDLmain.a is in SDL-devel, not SDL-static.

Therefore IMHO the right solution is to put libSDLmain.a into SDL-devel and 
libSDL.a (and other static libraries which also have a shared version, if any) 
into SDL-static.

Changing version to '9' as part of upcoming Fedora 9 GA.
More information and reason for this action is here:
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/BugZappers/HouseKeeping

builds as of 2008-07-03, version 1.2.13-4.fc10.