[argyllcms] Re: Argyllcms 1.0.1 packaged in fedora-devel

On Sunday 27 July 2008 09:52:40 am Frederic Crozat wrote:
> On Sun, Jul 27, 2008 at 6:06 PM, Graeme Gill <graeme@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
snip
> > You were warned, last time we had this discussion. You wouldn't
> > see this issue if you used Argyll as released.
>
> Sorry, but my goal is to create a "clean" platform, where this kind of
> hacks are not needed. If you were distributing a patch of your change
> on libusb in your tarball, at least, we wouldn't have to hunt after
> those changes.
>
> On Linux, we (collectively) have the possibility to "fix" the
> platform. I can understand why you are not interested
> in improving the plaform, but don't blame people who want to do it.
> And it would be nice to not make it harder to
> fix it.

I don't want to get into the middle of this.  But the real issue here is that 
there are problems with a commonly used library, libusb, that need to be 
fixed.   This is something that none of us has much control or influence over.  
 
Graeme is doing what he believes is the right thing to do to insure that 
ArgyllCMS works and I have followed the same path in some of my own work so I 
can understand his point of view (I use a modified version of lcms that has a 
mod that will not end up being available in the stock version).  Frederic is 
doing what he can to get the problem with the library fixed at least in the 
context of the distro(s) he supports and many of his points are valid.  In 
some respects both are correct although I think we can get more done if we 
work together rather than snipping at each other.  After all we want ArgyllCMS 
and the meter libraries to work correctly with the stock library and anything 
we do that does not move things in that direction is counter productive.

Instead perhaps we can come up with a plan to get things fixed.  One approach 
would be to create a diffinitive patch or patch set for libusb and make this 
available in a very visible place.  Perhaps the patch Frederic created is that 
patch?  Once this is available all of us can open bug reports with our various 
distro's asking them to apply that patch to libusb.  If even one major distro 
is using that patch (or patch set) then most other distros should start 
picking up the patch without too much effort on our part.  Since this has 
already happened with fredora and Mandriva then it is mostly a matter of 
getting other distros to start using this patch.  When most of the major 
distros are using this patch perhaps at that point the libusb folks will see 
the light and create a version that has been fixed.  In the mean time most of 
us running Linux platforms will be using distros that have a version of libusb 
that has been fixed.   Once that starts happening the Argyll build could 
prehaps check to see if a patched version is installed and use the shared (but 
patched) version rather than building with the built in version of libusb.

Frederic can you provide a link to the libusb patch(es)?   Has anyone verified 
that this patch does indeed fix the i1 pro issues in particular?  Graeme are 
there any other devices that will have problems if runing agaist an unpatched 
libusb?   I have tested the i1 display 2/Lt, Huey and Spyder 2 with stock 
libusb and these are OK but I would be mroe than ahppy to test these using 
this new set of patches.  Frederic if you can provide a link to the patch(es) 
I will open a bug report with my distro (gentoo) and perhaps others here can 
do the same thing.  This is the correct approach to this issue.  Users put 
pressure on the distros to get it fixed and the distros put pressure on the 
library maintainers.

I should also point out that although ArgyllCMS has not been packaged on many 
distros LProf has been a standard package on many distros for a long time and 
the next release of LProf will be using the ArgyllCMS meter libraries.  So 
even if your distro does not have an ArgyllCMS package you can point to LProf 
as something that will need this in the near future.  That is this in not just 
about ArgyllCMS.

Hal

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