On Tue, Jan 17, 2023 at 08:03:18PM -0800, Russ Allbery wrote: > Scott Talbert <swt@techie.net> writes: > > > In one of the library packages I maintain (hidapi), upstream removed a > > couple of global variables (my .symbols file noticed this). See > > abipkgdiff below. > > > Does this break ABI? My assessment is that it does NOT, but I would > > like to confirm. These variables were not declared in a header file, so > > I can't see how external user code would have referenced them. > > It does technically, but if the variables were never declared in a header > file, it's equivalent to hiding private functions that were previously > exposed by mistake but never prototyped for users. Traditionally, we > don't consider that an ABI break worth bumping the soname unless we have > some reason to believe that software is using those symbols. JFTR (I'm pretty sure that both Scott and Russ know this), https://sources.debian.org/ can help one figure out whether some other Debian package uses them. G'luck, Peter -- Peter Pentchev roam@ringlet.net roam@debian.org pp@storpool.com PGP key: http://people.FreeBSD.org/~roam/roam.key.asc Key fingerprint 2EE7 A7A5 17FC 124C F115 C354 651E EFB0 2527 DF13
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