Shared libraries [LWN.net]

Shared libraries

Posted Dec 5, 2025 2:38 UTC (Fri) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523)
In reply to: Shared libraries by dvdeug
Parent article: APT Rust requirement raises questions

So you convert from the ancient compressed TIFF to something more modern, like PNG. Problem solved in practice.

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Shared libraries

Posted Dec 5, 2025 9:33 UTC (Fri) by dvdeug (subscriber, #10998) [Link]

Except that TIFF has rich metadata support that PNG doesn't, including a whole set of private tags, and it's likely anyone still using TIFF is depending on one or the other. Changing to PNG is likely going to involve exporting that data to some format, and fixing up your system to import that data alongside the PNG.

And what's stopping someone from making a local copy of libpng and removing, say, Adam7 interlacing from it? "Nobody uses it", and it's more code surface. TIFF is a little weird, but if you support a file format, you should support it as far as reasonably possible, not randomly turning off features you're not interested in.