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Re: Libraries only provides .a, no .so - Bullet physics engine



On Wednesday 21 May 2008 5:42:09 pm Wen-Yen Chuang wrote:
> Gonéri Le Bouder wrote:
> > I saw your question about the .a too late. Can you contact upstream
> > (and Cc: the list) to know if they planted to release a shared lib one
> > day.
>
> Upstream author of Bullet suggests using forum instead of e-mail.
> I browsed the forum and list answers from upstream below:
> (For the list, I am talking about ITP: #476284).
>
> Erwin (upstream author of Bullet) wrote:
> > Bullet is not meant as a system-wide library.
> > The behaviour changes with different versions,
> > and you don't want a new version of a .dll/.so change and
> > break existing other applications that use Bullet.
> >
> > The manual tells how to use Bullet: simply add the Bullet/src folder
> > to your project, compile, link and run your application.
> > Please use static linked library, just like the Bullet demos do.
> >
> > Each project (Blender, Bullet demos, other) has its own version of
> > Bullet/src embedded. I choose this on purpose: different versions of
> > Bullet physics will have (slightly) different simulation behaviour.
> > And once a game or app is tuned, you don't want to upgrade the physics
> > anymore, it would break everything.
> >
> > At the moment, all C++ classes are directly exposed to the developer,
> > so he/she can use and extend them in any way. Such a rich C++ interface
> > doesn't suit a shared / dynamic library very well I think.
> > There is plans for an optional C-API, and it would be easier to expose
> > the Bullet library with such C-API as shared library.
> > But someone will need to go through the trouble of adding
> > additional/optional support for such shared library build setting
> > (either for C++ or C API).
>
> It is possible to provide .so, and it is proved to be working.
> However, maintainers have to handle all the ABI changes and select
> suitable so versioning. Upstream of Bullet does not support shared
> libraries currently.
>
> Do we have to provide .so?
> Or just provides .a, like what upstream suggests?
>
> Bullet includes some nice demo programs, it is worthy to be debianized
> even if we do not provide shared libraries.
>
> Kind regards
>  Wen-Yen Chuang (caleb)
>
> --
> My GPG key is signed by Debian Developer Masayuki Hatta.

If you provide a shared library, be sure to use a release type soname scheme 
(libbullet-<version>.so). Look at ogre for an example.

-- 
Regards,
Andres

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