Re: GCC 3.2 transition

[Richard Kettlewell <rjk@terraraq.org.uk>]

Matthew Wilcox <willy@debian.org> writes:
>      * Add a Conflict with the non-`c' version of the package.

So it will be impossible to have both the old and new library packages
on the system simultaneously.  That's broken.

>    Why don't we just change the sonames?
>
>    Because upstream chooses the soname to match their API. If we change

Sonames define ABIs not APIs.

>    the soname then we render ourselves binary-incompatible with other
>    distros and vendor-supplied binaries. This is important because the
>    LSB intend to standardise the GCC 3.2 ABI; for Debian to become
>    binary-incompatible at this point would be the height of
>    perversity.

You have to change the soname for this kind of transition to work
properly and (obviously) this must be coordinated with upstream.

-- 
http://www.greenend.org.uk/rjk/