Re: curl, testing and gcc-3.2 (?) (was Re: Debian curl package depends on gcc-3.2?)

[Björn Stenberg <bjorn@haxx.se>]

Colin Watson wrote:
> The reason why a library's shlibs get changed
> is that binaries built against one version of the library can't be
> guaranteed to run correctly against older versions.

Because the interface changed or because the previous version was buggy?

I have always assumed the first reason, but it seems many maintainers are
using the second.

While moderately helpful to users of unstable, using shlibs to push bug
fixes can be very destructive to the testing release. It stops other
packages from getting in, while not always fixing the bug anyway (if the
fixed version gets stuck in unstable, which is not uncommon).

I found only little in the debian developer manuals detailing how version
dependencies should, and should not, be used. Did I miss a section about
this, or is there a general consensus about the issue?

-- 
Björn