Re: [PROPOSAL] require unversioned -dev packages (was Re: library package policy for small gnome packages)
Michael Alan Dorman <mdorman@debian.org> wrote:
> Personally, I think it's smarter to keep the development package
> unversioned. I have what I think is a technical argument: libjpeg.
>
> libjpeg has used a versioned -dev, and look at a lot of the problems
> we've had with libjpeg, where months after the old packages were
> updated to new versions with new sonames---meaning theoretically that
> stuff shouldn't be compiled with them---we'd still get packages with
> deps on them, because the -dev package's versioning prevented the
> "correct" version from getting installed automatically.
>
> I just saw this on a new package on the alpha the other day---someone
> had an older version of a versioned -dev package installed, and thus
> we got a binary compiled against a less-than-latest version of a
> library.
>
> I really think it's a bad idea to have versioned -dev packages. Have
> we really had instances where they have given us any real advantage?
libgtk1.0-dev and libgtk1.2-dev are not source compatible.
--
I consume, therefore I am
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