shared libraries, bug 313094

[Brian May <bam@debian.org>]

Hello,

Very recently somebody filled a bug against on of my packages,
#313094.

In brief, the library soname changed without me realizing it, and the
package made in into the sarge release before anyone noticed. This
means that

a) (old) packages that linked with the old library won't work with the
new library.

b) recent packages that linked with the new library won't work with
the old library.

I added to the bug report saying I did not consider it worth fixing,
because the only breakage occurs if you upload from a version that
**no longer exists**[1] and was **never distributed in any stable release
of Debian**.

However somebody else has upgraded the severity of the bug to serious,
making it a release critical. The person offered no explanation as to
why they felt it was serious, or why they disagreed with my
assessment.

I am guessing that this means that the Debian administrators will have
to go back in time, and prevent my package from getting released with
sarge, but I didn't think Debian had the funds for a time machine
<grin>.

So what do people think?

* Is this a bug?

* Does it need fixing?

* Is serious really appropriate?

* What is the best way to fix this?

  - Should I change the name libdar2 to libdar3? Or should I wait
    until libdar4?

  - Should I add the (yucky) version dependency as suggested by the
    bug reporter?


My personal opinion is that it isn't really a bug, because it only is
only an issue for people who used the now obsolete version from a
previous testing/unstable. My understanding is that while Debian
supports upgrades from stable-->stable, we don't necessarily guarantee
upgrades from testing will work flawlessly.

Comments anyone?

Notes:

[1] Not counting hurd-i386, this platform would appear to be months
behind. I don't think the bug reporter used hurd though.
-- 
Brian May <bam@debian.org>