[asterisk-dev] Proposal to bring pjproject back into the fold

[George Joseph]

On Tue, Jan 19, 2016 at 7:52 PM, Jeffrey Ollie <jeff at ocjtech.us> wrote:

> OK, I'm going to take a deep breath here...
>
> The distributions policies against embedding libraries and statically
> linking code isn't some arbitrary policy.  It's a hard-earned best practice
> that's been proven over and over.
>
> I get that it's "easier" to not work with others to solve problems and to
> basically do a soft-fork of the pjproject code and embed it into Asterisk
> and get it all set up "just so".
>
> This is however, IMNHSO, short-sighted, anti-social behavior.  Asterisk
> used to be pretty bad in this regard but recently has been much much
> better.  I really don't want to see the clock turned back.
>
> My recommendations:
>
> 1) Work with the pjproject upstream to convert problematic compile-time
> options into runtime configurable options.  That way multiple consumers of
> the library can get pjproject to work the way that they need it to without
> recompiling it.
>
> 2) If #1 isn't feasible, work with the pjproject upstream to set defaults
> for compile-time options that work better for Asterisk.
>
> 3) Add runtime instrumentation to pjproject so that Asterisk can determine
> if pjproject is configured correctly for use with Asterisk at runtime.
>
> 4) Work with the distro maintainers to get pjproject packaged with the
> compilation options that work best with Asterisk.
>
> 5) Write up good docs on how to compile pjproject from source for use with
> Asterisk for those folks that like to compile with source.  Do your best to
> make sure that it's easily findable in Google searches, as well as linked
> to in the appropriate places from the Asterisk documentation.
>
> --
> Jeff Ollie
>
> ​Philosophically speaking, ​I agree with you 100%.  Unfortunately, when
philosophy meets the real world, things often don't go as planned.  The
reality is that the majority of people who use Asterisk don't care whether
pjproject is statically or dynamically linked or whether it's bundled or
not.  They just want it to work and when it doesn't they want a solution.
They want "1 throat to choke", they don't care whether it's Asterisk's
fault or pjproject's fault and they especially don't want to have to figure
out which it is themselves.  A quick search in the RedHat Bugzilla shows
that only 3 tickets were opened against Asterisk in the past 2 years by non
RedHat employees so it's certainly not the packagers they're asking for
help.  It's the Asterisk team that's on the hook.

While your suggestions can and should be taken and can help in the long
term, it's not enough.  In the end, it's about the people who produce the
software trying to help the people who use it.  I sympathize with the
plight of the packagers, and if the packagers were fielding the issues I'd
sympathize even more, but that's not the case and I always have issues with
black-and-white policies that leave no room for exceptions or the
application of common sense.


>
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