Re: Versioned Symbols

[Sam Hartman <hartmans@mit.edu>]

>>>>> "Anthony" == Anthony Towns <aj@azure.humbug.org.au> writes:

    Anthony> On Sat, Mar 08, 2003 at 04:16:47PM -0500, Sam Hartman
    Anthony> wrote:
    >> I think that we should implement versioned symbols.

    Anthony> Uhh, versioned symbols means that programs built on
    Anthony> Debian systems won't run elsewhere. That's not something
    Anthony> we should be doing, except in very specific cases where
    Anthony> the gain outweighs the drawback.

I believe that the gain outweighs the drawback in any core library
that can drag in plugins unrelated to the application.  In particular,
I believe that versioned symbols should be used at a minimum for
dependencies of SASL plugins, PAM modules and NSS modules.


Also, I'll point out a minor correction to your claim.  The programs
with versioned symbol requirements will run on other distributions,
but will give warnings.  This is as you point out fairly unacceptable.

Certainly in cases where we want to add versioned symbols we should
work as hard as possible with the upstreams to accept these changes.