Re: Questions to testing/unstable

[Brian May <bam@debian.org>]

>>>>> "Herbert" == Herbert Xu <herbert@gondor.apana.org.au> writes:

    Herbert> That means the library maintainer has stuffed up.  If
    Herbert> he's done it properly, his libraries can go into testing
    Herbert> wihtout having to wait for all its users to recompile.
    Herbert> This used to be insignificant, but testing has made it
    Herbert> much more important which IMHO is a very good thing.

This ideal is not practically possible with a complicated package like
heimdal-libs:

[520] [snoopy:unstable:bam] ~ >dpkg -L heimdal-lib
/.
/usr
/usr/lib
/usr/lib/libroken.so.9.2.1
/usr/lib/libcom_err.so.1.0.1
/usr/lib/libsl.so.0.1.1
/usr/lib/libss.so.0.1.3
/usr/lib/libasn1.so.2.2.0
/usr/lib/libkrb5.so.15.0.0
/usr/lib/libhdb.so.7.0.0
/usr/lib/libkadm5srv.so.7.0.3
/usr/lib/libkadm5clnt.so.4.2.1
/usr/lib/libgssapi.so.1.2.0
/usr/lib/libotp.so.0.1.2
/usr/lib/libroken.so.9
/usr/lib/libcom_err.so.1
/usr/lib/libsl.so.0
/usr/lib/libss.so.0
/usr/lib/libasn1.so.2
/usr/lib/libkrb5.so.15
/usr/lib/libhdb.so.7
/usr/lib/libkadm5srv.so.7
/usr/lib/libkadm5clnt.so.4
/usr/lib/libgssapi.so.1
/usr/lib/libotp.so.0
[...]

For instance, the next version of Heimdal, 0.3f could increase the
major version of libkrb5 from 15 to 16. This means all programs that
depend on the old heimdal-lib are now broken, because it is not
possible to install old and new at the same time (the other files
conflict).

So, just in case, I have the shlibs depends set so that all packages
must be recompiled for every upstream realize, just in case.

Of course, the proper solution would be to split heimdal-libs up, so
you have one library per package, but there are 11 libraries here!!!
I personally consider that to be too complicated.

Yes, another solution might be to combine some of the libraries
together (eg. make libasn1 a convenience library; combine e2fsprogs
and Heimdal's version of libcom_err, etc).  However, that is beyond
the scope of what I am prepared to do (in my limited time) as the
Debian maintainer. If anyone has plenty of spare time, please give
upstream any patches you may create to do this <grin>.

(lets assume for now that issues like libtool < 1.4 not recording
interlibrary dependencies properly have been fixed, as I will assume
that a) libtool 1.4 which has just been released solves this, and b)
that they have fixed 2 serious bugs which I found in the CVS version;
I still need to test it though).
-- 
Brian May <bam@debian.org>