Re: libgal sonames

[Sam Hartman <hartmans@debian.org>]

>>>>> "Norbert" == Norbert Veber <nveber@debian.org> writes:

    Norbert> I intend to send the following email to ximian.  If
    Norbert> anyone has comments, let me know :)


    Norbert> Please try to carefuly consider weather or not a new
    Norbert> soname is really necessary when releasing a new libgal,
    Norbert> or if just increasing the version of the library would
    Norbert> suffice.  

I'm not sure that sending this mail is such a good idea.  If they
 aren't good enough release engineers to get sonames and versioned
 symbols and all the rest right, then perhaps you want them making
 mistakes that involve too many sonames rather than too few.  Yes
 recompiling libraries and dealing with package additions is annoying.
 However dealing with the mess from botched releases that claim to be
 backwards compatible and aren't is far worse.

If you really want to send such mail, you should include enough detail
about how to do library versioning correctly that someone can take
your mail and pointers contained within and learn when to change the
soname along with how to deal with backward-incompatible changes when
changing the soname is not an option (versioned symbols etc etc).  O,
yeah, and you need to find a way of presenting the information in such
a manner that it is likely to get read.

You do have another option, you know.  If your upstream is not doing a
good job of release engineering, then release engineer their software
in the Debian package.  In a case like this it may well be that the
advantages to Debian to having correct soname management outweigh the
disadvantages of using a different soname than upstream.  Consider
doing something like libgaldeb1 and then when it is time to change the
soname libgaldeb2 etc.