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RFC: Handling of mozilla libraries



Instead of randomly breaking things, maybe it is time to rethink how
mozilla's libraries are handled. As I understand it, moving those
libraries to /usr/lib/mozilla is dictated by the fact they don't have a
SONAME (and we require a SONAME for libs in /usr/lib). But then, the
linker cannot find them anymore as they are not in one of its
directories.
There are at least 3 very important issues regarding these libraries :
1) libraries without SONAME
2) libraries in /usr/lib/mozilla
3) no stable ABI and nothing in the packaging to prevent breakage

1) could be solved by adding a SONAME. This would render us
binary-incompatible with upstream, but I don't think anyone is using
binary applications linked against mozilla today.
This would automatically solve 2), and 3) could be solved with putting
the libraries in a separate package.

The question is whether we really want to introduce that
incompatibility. Another possible solution would be to keep those
libraries without SONAME in /usr/lib like mozilla 1.2 did, but to use
virtual packages for dependencies, i.e. providing mozilla-1.3, and
making galeon/whatever depend on mozilla-1.3. This would solve 3) by the
means of the dependency system.

Convincing upstream to move to using SONAMEs would be nicer, of
course... :)

Please, don't keep the situation as is. If it is possible to provide a
smooth upgrade path for all of our users, why not doing it ?
-- 
 .''`.           Josselin Mouette        /\./\
: :' :           josselin.mouette@ens-lyon.org
`. `'                        joss@debian.org
  `-  Debian GNU/Linux -- The power of freedom

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