RE: abigail-tools instead of dpkg-gensymbols ?

[Simon Chopin <schopin@ubuntu.com>]

Hi Jérémy,

On lun. 15 sept. 2025 17:35:26, Jérémy Lal wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> following a remark done by someone during t64 transition,
> I wonder if abigail-tools could be a better way to track symbols changes ?
> 
> A package maintainer can use it like dpkg-gensymbols, except the format is
> XML,
> and it seems to be able to deal better with C++ changes.
> 
> Anyone knows if that's a reliable tool for that purpose ?

I have often wondered about doing something like this, as I think
abigail would be great at detecting ABI breaks. I *think* it is used in
Fedora.

However, symbols files are also used for another purpose: generating
versioned dependencies when you start depending on a newer symbol. In
order to replace gensymbols, you'd want to make sure it could also do
that.

Cheers,
Simon