Re: Abiword 0.7.6-1 and libpng
Darren O. Benham <gecko@debian.org> wrote:
>
>> If it's an ABI change in libpng 1.0.5 (as opposed to a bug in Abiword), f=
> ile a
>> bug report against libpng because the package name should be changed so t=
> hat it
>> does not satisfy a dependency that it doesn't actually provide.
>
> Why? I hate gratuitious package name changes and I think SOME people mess
> around with their packages (changing names, splitting, joining, etc) way to
> much.
Because it breaks the dependency. If libpng 1.0.5 is no longer able to
satisfy (some) packages that depend on it because they will crash when
running with it, why should it provide that dependency?
After all, the only reason we have sonames for libraries is so that different
ABIs can be easily distinguished, and that is also why our policy requires
library packages to include the soname in their names so that one, different
sonames can be installed at the same time, and two (IMHO more important than
one), packages don't provide dependencies that they don't satisfy.
This paradigm breaks down when upstream people are ignorant about sonames or
are bound by the circumstances (as was the case with lesstif) and change the
ABI without changing the soname. IMHO we should still change the package name
so that upgrades can occur smoothly. I mean after all this is why we have
dependencies, i.e., when you install some program, all the libraries that it
depends on will be installed automatically so that it will work, rather than
fail with an unsatisfied linking error or even worse IMHO, crash because of an
incompatible ABI>
--
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Email: Herbert Xu ~{PmV>HI~} <herbert@gondor.apana.org.au>
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