2008.12.17 20:54 "[Tiff] Deleting tags from a directory", by Frank Warmerdam

2008.12.18 20:42 "Re: [Tiff] 3.9.0 release, Was: tiffvers.h - TIFFLIB_RELEASE macro addition", by Bob Friesenhahn

I *do* feel like those who had some complaint against releasing 3.9.0 immediately need to step forward with appropriate code changes. Certainly they should be afforded time to develop those patches, but my impression is that those patches aren't coming ever. So they either need to do so, or we need to move on without those changes.

It's just my opinion, of course, that some release is better than no release.

The situation is that conservative OS distributions like Debian won't pick up a new libtiff for about ten years if it is not ABI compatible with what they are already using. This is a problem for 3.9.X since it is supposed to be our avenue to get out critical fixes for older distributions well into the future.

Of course the same objection applies to libtiff 4.0 but libtiff 4.0 offers important new features so such objections may be ignored. In fact, since ABI compatibility is impossible, Debian maintainers are likely to find a way to offer it to their users without upsetting their applecart.

Bob
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Bob Friesenhahn
bfriesen@simple.dallas.tx.us, http://www.simplesystems.org/users/bfriesen/
GraphicsMagick Maintainer, http://www.GraphicsMagick.org/