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

[Colin Watson <cjwatson@debian.org>]

On Tue, Apr 22, 2003 at 11:45:08PM +0200, Bj?rn Stenberg wrote:
> 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.

Can we have some examples? I've seen maintainers occasionally doing that
with ordinary dependencies, but not with libraries' shlibs files.

> 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).

Remember that one of the major points of testing is to keep bugs out. If
there's some bugginess in some group of packages in unstable then it's
better that it be kept out than rushed into testing as quickly as
possible. "Getting it into testing" is only good if the "it" in question
is worthy.

Cheers,

-- 
Colin Watson                                  [cjwatson@flatline.org.uk]