Re: Library packages depending on data files

[Adrian Bunk <bunk@fs.tum.de>]

On Tue, Feb 03, 2004 at 01:10:51AM +0000, Andrew Suffield wrote:
> On Mon, Feb 02, 2004 at 06:33:47PM +0100, Sebastian Ley wrote:
> > 2) Conflict with other versions of the library to disable support of
> > multiple versions of them.
> 
> This is not an option. If you do this, you will be crucified.
> 
> It is necessary to support having multiple ABI versions of a library
> installed at once.

Why?

E.g. the KDE maintainers did explicitely disallow installing multiple 
so-versions of kdelibs at the same time.

And considering as an example the strange mixture of GNOME 1 and GNOME 2
that was in testing for some months, which was caused by the fact that
the GNOME 1 and GNOME 2 libraries can be installed at the same time,
disallowing multiple so-versions installed at the same time results in a
more consistent testing.

Considering how many problems binaries that were linked with multiple 
versions of libraries that don't use versioned symbols have caused in 
the past (well-known examples are libpng and libssl), I'd like to hear 
good reasons in favor of having multiple so-versions installed at the 
same time.

cu
Adrian

-- 

       "Is there not promise of rain?" Ling Tan asked suddenly out
        of the darkness. There had been need of rain for many days.
       "Only a promise," Lao Er said.
                                       Pearl S. Buck - Dragon Seed