Re: possible mass-filing of bugs: many shared library packages contain binaries in usr/bin

[Brian May <bam@snoopy.apana.org.au>]

On Mon, 2002-05-06 at 14:09, Stephen Zander wrote:
> >>>>> "Junichi" == Junichi Uekawa <dancer@netfort.gr.jp> writes:
>     Junichi> They don't upgrade properly.
> 
> "You keep using that word.  I do not think it means what you think it
> means."

Definitions:
        * By library upgrade I mean major library upgrade, one which
          changes the major number of the library rendering making it
          incompatible with current applications.

I think this is an important issue, and I in my quick scan I haven't
seen an email that really addresses this, so I will bite.

Having multiple major versions of a shared library causes lots of
problems.

The initial problem is that the old library conflicts with the new
library.

This means that the new library will not get into testing (pretend the
freeze isn't in place for discussion here) until all binary packages are
recompiled.

If one of these packages is broken and cannot recompile for some reason,
it can really delay the library getting into testing.

Now assume that the previous version of the library in testing has
serious data loss issues, and must get replaced as a matter of
urgency... This will affect all applications that use this library, not
just the broken one which won't recompile.

When the user does install the new library and the new packages, it will
remove the old library. Hence any local programs compiled with the old
library will break.

Another issue is that users, when upgrading libraries must also upgrade
all packages that link against these libraries. This makes installing a
new library, for instance just to build new packages a lot more
complicated, as you also have to upgrade every binary that links into
this library, test it, etc.

For these reasons I did the difficult task of splitting the libraries in
Heimdal apart so that these issues wouldn't be a problem.

I can't imagine other packages being quite as difficult as this (Heimdal
has an endless number of libraries).

I gave a list of possible solutions in my other email.
-- 
Brian May <bam@snoopy.apana.org.au>


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