Keith Matthews wrote:
On Wed, 13 Nov 2002 18:53:42 -0600 "Ian Pilcher" wrote:
My thought is to use SGI FAM (http://oss.sgi.com/projects/fam/), which is shipped with Red Hat and (according to bug #588) Mandrake. I'm not sure about any other distributions, but the FAQ on the web page states that Enlightenment, GNOME, and KDE all use it, so it should be pretty widespread.
It sems to have been dropped in RH 7.3 which is a good thing.
I just checked my 7.3 filesystem. It's there, and it's definitely shipped with 8.0.
Fam requires portmapper. If not set up properly (i.e. by someone who understands what they are letting loose) portmapper can be a serious security problem. The security community regard the introduction of fam a serious backward step on RH's part.
KDE etc might use it but they do not _need_ it.
You are also assuming that every distro follows RH's lead which is very definitely not true. Many people are already getting upset about the number of libraries that are required to get some packages to run. GNUCash being a prime example of package use gone mad.
Can you suggest a superior alternative?
I don't want to get into a flamewar over the merits of your criticisms (what does Red Hat have to do with the libraries required by GnuCash?), but doing something -- albeit imperfect -- seems better than doing nothing.
BTW, I don't plan to introduce a hard dependency, if that's what you're worried about.