Re: DH way to set SONAME
On 09/06/13 13:12, Christoph Egger wrote:
> Emilio Pozuelo Monfort <pochu@debian.org> writes:
>> Patching a library downstream to bump the SONAME needs to be done only in very
>> special cases and when you know what you're doing. For instance you're going to
>> break compatibility with third party software that links against the old SONAME.
>
> Well you also break compatibility with 3rd party software when changing
> the ABI incompatibly with your new upload.
That depends. The new version may have removed some symbols that were not
exposed in the headers and thus were not supposed to be used (and probably
aren't) but were exposed in the DSO. Or perhaps they removed a pretty unused
symbol that was part of the public ABI.
I'm not saying upstream shouldn't bump the SONAME when breaking the ABI, because
they should. But if they don't, then doing so in Debian has consequences, and
one should be aware of them and take them into consideration before doing that.
And if doing it, the new SONAME has to be chosen carefully as to avoid one that
upstream will use when bumping it next time.
See also
http://www.netfort.gr.jp/~dancer/column/libpkg-guide/libpkg-guide.html#binarycompat
Emilio
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