Re: Another XLibre and/or Wayland subthread

On 29 Jul 2026 19:21:36 GMT, rbowman wrote:

> On Wed, 29 Jul 2026 18:11:22 +0000, Farley Flud wrote:
> 
>> Unfortunately, the mainstream distros have all dropped cooledit (it's
>> probably not "modern" enough for their tastes).
> 
> Well, except for the one edit it hasn't seen activity in 4 years. Not so 
> much for applications but when I'm deciding if I will use libfoobar in a 
> project I always check the activity.
> 
> https://github.com/libexpat/libexpat
> 
> I've been using expat almost as long as it's been around and they're still 
> poking at it.  I've never encountered a bug but apparently there is always 
> something to do, mostly security fixes lately. If I saw the hypothetical 
> libfoobar hadn't been touched in 4 years I'd look for alternatives. True, 
> maybe it is so good it hasn't needed work.
>

If it ain't broke then don't fix it.

That tried-and-true aphorism is standard in every engineer's toolbox.

Software does not "age."  If it runs today then it will run forever.

The only problem is that the APIs of any dependencies may change
(although they should never do so).

For example, I use a 25-year-old program that calls routines in
libtiff.  That library was updated and the former API is no longer
valid.  But it's no problem.  Just build the former version of
libtiff and either link it directly or use the LD_LIBRARY_PATH
variable at run time.

However, if one is totally dependent on a distro then this may not
be so simple.

But whatever, software never "dies."  Every GNU project, including
the kernel, has source archives going back to the beginning.

Even GCC maintains source archives.  If a certain program fails
to build with the latest-and-greatest GCC there is no need to
howl and beg for an update.  Just revert to an earlier version
of GCC.



-- 
Gentoo/LFS: Is there any-fucking-thing else?