I was trying to test my SDL2 game package with the upcoming runtime, but it couldn’t find SDL2-image. I’ve looked up the contents of freedesktop-sdk on gitlab, and indeed, it looks like SDL-image and SDL-ttf switched to their SDL3 versions. But I suppose SDL2-compat will be of little use for most packages without these components, so many packages will be in trouble with the new runtime. (and e.g. SDL-mixer and SDL-net still don’t have SDL3 versions)
Is there some kind of policy for the runtime that prevents shipping 2 major versions of libraries, even during the transition period?
There is no transition period, they were simply updated to the latest available versions. The runtime needs to be minimal, it can’t package every version out there for every library. These libraries are independent extensions of SDL2, not everyone requires them. There is also no guarantee that the SDL2 versions will remain supported until 2027 which is 25.08’s support period.
But I suppose SDL2-compat will be of little use for most packages without these components
I certainly intend to submit a PR to shared-modules, that was one of the reasons why I asked.
By transition period I mean the time it takes for all users to update. As far as I can tell, SDL3 was only declared stable recently, and SDL2 + -{image,ttf} are still fully supported with regular bugfix releases. Also, other components like SDL2-{mixer,net} still don’t have SDL3 versions.
As for SDL2-compat, I know it’s not meant to provide compatibility for these components. What I meant was that it will be used by programs that are not yet ported to SDL3, and many of them are likely to also use these components, so SDL2-compat is of little help if the SDL2 versions of those are not available.