Re: Library packages depending on data files

[Matthew Garrett <mgarrett@chiark.greenend.org.uk>]

Adrian Bunk wrote:
>On Tue, Feb 03, 2004 at 01:10:51AM +0000, Andrew Suffield wrote:
>> It is necessary to support having multiple ABI versions of a library
>> installed at once.
>
>Why?

Because ABI breaks may be accompanied by large API breaks, and
applications that we wish to ship may not be ported to the new API. See
the large number of GTK 1 applications, for instance. Not all Gnome 1
applications have been ported to Gnome 2, and refusing to support those
on the basis that it makes testing a bit uglier for a while is foolish.
Not to mention the closed-source applications that we wish people to be
able to run.

-- 
Matthew Garrett | mjg59-chiark.mail.debian.devel@srcf.ucam.org