Re: [wsjt-devel] Polling hamlib when flrig is being used?

[Bill S. <g4...@cl...>]

On 26/03/2020 13:51, Black Michael via wsjt-devel wrote:
> What makes you think WSJT-X needs to use the system libraries?  
> There's no such requirement that I've ever heard of.
> WSJT-X is written (as are all applications) to use specific 
> capabilities in hamlib.
>
> I'll bet that if you do "ldd wsjtx|grep hamlib" you won't see hamlib 
> referenced at all...because it's statically linked.
>
> WSJT-X distributes the complete hamlib utility set with it too.
>
> Using the 3.3 version is just going to result in you getting lots of 
> complaints about bug and rigs that aren't implemented or don't work.
>
> We have finally cleared up all known bugs in hamlib and found a bunch 
> more through the use of static analysis tools.
>
> de Mike W9MDB

Mike,

Linux distributions have rules about what can be submitted as a package. 
Individual users can choose to build however they like but package 
maintainers have to follow the rules and guidelines that the 
distributions require. As Christoph points out there are issues even 
when statically linking packages, particularly in how to apply security 
patches that may appear post release of the underlying package. The 
WSJT-X upstream tarball does provide a mechanism for applying patches to 
both WSJT-X and the bundled Hamlib but discovering those patches and 
applying them becomes the responsibility of individual package 
maintainers. OTOH if WSJT-X were to dynamically link the child package 
then only the package maintainer of child package needs to deal with 
tracking security and other critical patches.

This is  tricky area, even if there were many more Hamlib releases it is 
still hard to get the latest rig support. I have long had plans to move 
to dynamic linking of Hamlib by WSJT-X but TBH Hamlib has not been 
stable enough or up to date enough in release form just yet. Let's hope 
that Hamlib 4, probably 4.1, allows that to happen without depriving too 
many users of support for rigs coming to the market soon.

73
Bill
G4WJS.