Please support building against system's iniparser (rather than the bundled one)

[karlstav]

Please support building against system's iniparser (rather than the bundled one)

We use a custom iniparser (ndevilla/iniparser). I don't think it's the one available in Gentoo and it works, so replacing it isn't a good idea.

[karlstav]

I don't know much about iniparsers, but if there is a system-wide iniparser with packages for all mayor distros (libconfig?), then maybe we should check it out. If not, @CelestialWalrus solution is probably best for now .

[anko]

@CelestialWalrus

We use a custom iniparser (ndevilla/iniparser). I don't think it's the one available in Gentoo

No, that's the same iniparser packaged in Gentoo and Arch. The upstream URL link on Arch's iniparser package and the Homepage link on Gentoo's iniparser package both point to the project's homepage, which links to the github page.

it works, so replacing it isn't a good idea

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For some actual counter-points, see the static linux FAQ.

I'm in favour, mainly because this allows improvements to happen to the libraries we rely on, without us having to do anything. Iniparser is a really common library, so almost all distros have it packaged (Ubuntu, CRUX, CentOS, Fedora…). For packagers, having the option to compile against a system library sounds like a good thing.

[hartwork]

We use a custom iniparser (ndevilla/iniparser).

It's the same author, it's not a fork. Looking at http://ndevilla.free.fr/iniparser/index.html you can see

git clone http://github.com/ndevilla/iniparser.git

up there, pointing to the very same Git repository.

I don't think it's the one available in Gentoo and it works, so replacing it isn't a good idea.

It soon will be, see https://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=556774 and ndevilla/iniparser#62.

[karlstav]

valid points.

as I said earlier, if there is a system iniparser available for all major distros we should definitely use it. And if you want to create the patch @hartwork that would be awesome as I am striped from time at the moment. But I can't seem to find iniParser for Ubuntu/debian, am I missing something?

[hartwork]

But I can't seem to find iniParser for Ubuntu/debian, am I missing something?

The link by @anko for ubuntu is an unofficial repository. Officially, Debian and Ubuntu do not have a package for iniparser, afaik. There was a "intent to package" ticket (ITP for short) in Debian but it was closed, see https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=582657#51.

[karlstav]

@hartwork ok, how about using libconfig? To me it looks like it does the same as ini parser and I think there is also available packages for all mayor distros. I'll pull your request for now, but I really think we should make things as distro independent as possible.

@CelestialWalrus what do you think? You wrote the original config file stuff for iniparser, do you think it could be "ported" to use libconfig instead? Its API looks pretty straight forward.

@karlstav I'm busy with projects ATM, so I won't be able to port it now.

[hartwork]

@hartwork ok, how about using libconfig? To me it looks like it does the same as ini parser and I think there is also available packages for all mayor distros. I'll pull your request for now, but I really think we should make things as distro independent as possible.

No objections. If you want to go that road, I would recommend to code against both libconfig 1.4.9 and 1.5 (if their interface differs) so that both users of a stable and bleeding-edge distro (or release of a distro) have what you need. For example on Debian:

oldstable  wheezy   1.4.8
stable     jessie   1.4.9
testing    stretch  1.4.9
unstable   sid      1.5

[karlstav]

this is implemented in 0.4.0