Re: libtiff status: only 21 to go

[Jay Berkenbilt <ejb@ql.org>]

>   Jay Berkenbilt <ejb@ql.org> writes:
>
>   > Executive summary: enlightenment is the last package that is blocking
>   > some other package.  guikachu's maintainer specifically requested
>   > NMU.  Here's the rest of the details.
>   >
>   > It's possible that some of these have been uploaded but not processed
>   > far enough for the RC bug to have been closed.  My apologies if your
>   > package is in this list.
>
>   BTW, is rebuilding against libtiff-dev (provided by libtiff4-dev) enough,
>   or is build-depending on libtiff4-dev really necessary and why?

I'll give my opinion, but someone with more experience with Debian
library issues may contradict me.

My opinion is that if your application uses libtiff directly and does
not use any libraries that use libtiff, then there's no reason for you
to not just use libtiff-dev.  At present, libtiff-dev is provided only
by libtiff4-dev (in sid) because libtiff3g-dev no longer exists (in
sid).

It is possible in the future that more than one package will provide
libtiff-dev.  If I have anything to do with it, should this happen,
any additional packages that provide libtiff-dev would have versioned
symbols.  I think this means that it would be safe for you to use
libtiff-dev instead of libtiff4-dev now even if your application uses
other libraries that also use libtiff, but I'm not 100% sure about
this because I have not yet learned all the subtitles of versioned
symbols.  (This situation will soon be corrected.)

I'm sure someone will correct this if I am wrong.

-- 
Jay Berkenbilt <ejb@ql.org>
http://www.ql.org/q/