> One issue that I see with your changes, although I don't know enough > about libraries to tell know if I am right, is that you reduced the > symbols (as lesstif doesn't have them after your change). Interestingly, an other discussion on this list [1], mentions the Debian policy (8.1) where it is stated that: """Every time the shared library ABI changes in a way that may break binaries linked against older versions of the shared library, the SONAME of the library and the corresponding name for the binary package containing the runtime shared library should change. Normally, this means the SONAME should change any time an interface is removed from the shared library or the signature of an interface (the number of parameters or the types of parameters that it takes, for example) is changed. This practice is vital to allowing clean upgrades from older versions of the package and clean transitions between the old ABI and new ABI without having to upgrade every affected package simultaneously.""" I guess that answers more clearly what you should do with respect to lesstif, and as far as I understand means quite some more work than you have done so far. Nevertheless, personally I still consider it good to remove the duplication of code, but we should as the question if lesstif is worth this. In my last round of improvements, there was some debate about if we shouldn't remove lesstif completely from Debian, although I think since last time the state has improved a bit. We can of course (I still have upstream commit rights) again improve lesstif itself. Apart from this, to find possible sponsors, I think it might help when you state that you are maintainer of one of the reverse build-dependencies of lesstif, and are thus keen on improving the state of lesstif. Paul [1] http://lists.debian.org/debian-mentors/2011/08/msg00266.html
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