Bug#509932: shlibs format only addresses one versioning structure

[Bill Allombert <Bill.Allombert@math.u-bordeaux1.fr>]

On Sat, Dec 27, 2008 at 12:12:43PM -0800, Russ Allbery wrote:
> Package: debian-policy
> Version: 3.8.0.1
> Severity: minor
> 
> The current description of the shlibs format in section 8.6.3 assumes
> all shared libraries have SONAMEs of the form libfoo.so.<version>.
> However, Debian's tools also support a versioned SONAME of the form
> libfoo-<version>.so.

I am not sure I understand that statement. Which Debian tools are they ?
As far as I understand, Debian supports SONAME of any form or shapes,
though we generally use the following symlink scheme:

libfoo.so.1 -> libfoo.so.1.3.0
libfoo.so   -> libfoo.so.1.3.0 

where libfoo.so.1 is the SONAME, and libfoo.so is the link in the -dev
package, the name "libfoo.so" being imposed by the linker search strategy 
when we do 'gcc -lfoo'. 

Are there shared libraries (not plugin) in Debian with SONAME of the
form libfoo-<version>.so ?

This would be slightly dangerous because this allows the faulty command
gcc -lfoo-<version> to complete even if the include files on the
system are for an incompatible version of libfoo.

Cheers,
-- 
Bill. <ballombe@debian.org>

Imagine a large red swirl here.