Library version in name vs. so version

[Roland Stigge <stigge@debian.org>]

Hi,

adopting the jasper JPEG 2000 library[1] in Debian, I'm struggling with
the upstream convention of incorporating the package version into the
library name. I.e., the shared library is created as

/usr/lib/libjasper-1.701.so.1.0.0

for jasper-1.701.0. Following Policy chapter 8, the respective binary
package names would be:

libjasper-1.701-1
libjasper-1.701-dev

This implies that on every upstream update, the binary package name
would need to be changed.

-> Is this the way to go or should I try to convince upstream to change
the policy and name the shared object e.g. /usr/lib/libjasper.so.1.0.0
utilizing the soversion on updates?

-> Besides, the -dev package includes include files in
/usr/include/jasper/ (e.g. /usr/include/jasper/jasper.h) which causes
the respective -dev packages of different upstream versions to conflict
anyway. Would I have to provide a virtual package (e.g. libjasper-dev)
to conflict with?

Thanks in advance!

bye,
  Roland

[1] http://www.ece.uvic.ca/~mdadams/jasper/