Re: Transition needed for Octave 6.3.0?

[Rafael Laboissière <rafael@debian.org>]

* Sébastien Villemot <sebastien@debian.org> [2021-08-07 17:17]:

> Since bullseye is scheduled for release on 2021-08-14, we will soon be 
> able to upload Octave 6.3.0 to unstable.
>
> However, the release notes say:
>
> This bug fix release breaks ABI compatibility with Octave 6.2.0. 
> Re-build binaries (like .oct or .mex files) when updating to this version.
>
> So my understanding is that this means we have to go through a full 
> transition (as we do with major releases).
>
> Surprisingly, the SOVERSION of liboctave has not been bumped in this 
> release (it’s still liboctave 8). I do not know if this is an oversight 
> from the upstream developers, or if the ABI breakage is unrelated to 
> the interface of the library. If this is an oversight, then we should 
> rename the liboctave8 package to something like “liboctave8b”.

I would ask the upstream authors to release a new version 6.3.1 with 
the correct SOVERSION (liboctave9).

> In any case, we should try to understand what is the exact nature of 
> the ABI breakage. I could not find useful information in the mercurial 
> log. Maybe we should contact the Octave developers (if some of them are 
> reading this, please follow up!).

Yes, please.

Rafael