Tim F wrote:
> 
> I don't think I'm relaying my point properly.  None of this has *anything*
> to do with what I was trying to suggest.  As an example, lets say I have
> the prepackaged binary, which is statically linked against libpng-1.2.5 (I
> think). But lets say there is a bug in libpng-1.2.5 that in certain
> instances causes a memory overflow or (even less likely) a corrupted image.
>  libpng-1.2.6beta has a fix for this bug, but all users of the prepackaged
> povray now have a borked binary.

Do you really think we have not been aware of this possibility when 
making the decision to have a statically linked official version?

Christoph

-- 
POV-Ray tutorials, include files, Sim-POV,
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> I don't think I'm relaying my point properly.  None of this has *anything*
> to do with what I was trying to suggest.  As an example, lets say I have
> the prepackaged binary, which is statically linked against libpng-1.2.5 (I
> think). But lets say there is a bug in libpng-1.2.5 that in certain
> instances causes a memory overflow or (even less likely) a corrupted image.
>  libpng-1.2.6beta has a fix for this bug, but all users of the prepackaged
> povray now have a borked binary.

	I was addressing this more specifically in my second message (in the
first one I didn't notice you were actually refering to the official binary
for PC-Linux)  :-)
	Again, this has been considered a minor (and only potential*) problem
with respect to releasing a fully-static binary, which _should_ work in any
circumstance on a not-so-old PC and Linux kernel.  Since the POV-Team does not
develop the 3rd-party libraries, there is of course a risk, but this risk is
evaluated when (publicly beta-)testing the binaries.

	- NC

* IIRC such a situation already happened with POV-Ray 3.1g and the PNG library.

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Christoph Hormann <chr### [at] gmxde> wrote:
>
> Do you really think we have not been aware of this possibility when
> making the decision to have a statically linked official version?
>

No - I never said that.  My question was:

Message: <web.40febe24a404e2e24e6ed3100@news.povray.org>
"Thorsten Froehlich" <thorsten [at] trfde> wrote:
>
> Because many people have extremely outdated versions and the start reporting
> problems in POV-Ray resulting from them having linked POV-Ray with outdated
> obsolete buggy libraries that had been fixed a long time ago.

But what happens when the problem is reversed?  i.e. what if new libraries
appear that fix a bug or two in an external dependency to POVRay?  Will new
point releases of POVRay be released, or should users download the new
libraries and rebuild POVRay, linking to the updated libraries?

Regards,
Tim

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