* Nico Schlömer <nico.schloemer@gmail.com>, 2015-09-07, 20:46:
In Debian, I find packages such as ``` libzeep3.0 libzdb9 libzim0 ```i.e., libraries with some number appended. What's the meaning of that number?
This is explained in Policy §8.1:Normally, the run-time shared library and its ‘SONAME’ symlink should be placed in a package named ‘<libraryname><soversion>’, where <soversion> is the version number in the ‘SONAME’ of the shared library. Alternatively, if it would be confusing to directly append <soversion> to <libraryname> (if, for example, <libraryname> itself ends in a number), you should use ‘<libraryname>-<soversion>’ instead.
To determine the <soversion>, look at the ‘SONAME’ of the library, stored in the ELF ‘SONAME’ attribute. It is usually of the form ‘<name>.so.<major-version>’ (for example, ‘libz.so.1’). The version part is the part which comes after ‘.so.’, so in that example it is ‘1’. The soname may instead be of the form ‘<name>-<major-version>.so’, such as ‘libdb-5.1.so’, in which case the name would be ‘libdb’ and the version would be ‘5.1'.
-- Jakub Wilk