* Henning Makholm (henning@makholm.net) wrote: > Scripsit Stephen Frost > > If the API changes in an incompatible way then *fix* the things which > > use the library to use the new API. Users aren't affected- the old, > > already compiled package, works fine against the lib it depends on, the > > new package will fail when trying to build against the new API > > Exactly. Ensuring that the new API is not available under the old one's > name will make sure that the new package does fail (because of a > missing build-dependency) rather than trying silently to build against > the new API as if it was the old, and possibly producing bad binaries. bad binaries which, one would hope, would be tested and found out to be bad. Of course, the other thing is that it'd be better for the depended-upon library maintainer to just notify people when the API changes in a silent-but-deadly way, or when the API changes in a non-backwards-compatible way at all. Also, the build-depend wouldn't be missing necessairly, aiui it requires a bit of manual intervention, and it'd still be available on people's machines. Stephen
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