* Julien Puydt<julien.puydt@laposte.net> [120807 12:41]:
I don't know what happens to old programs, but :
1) nothing in debian depends on that library ;
2) this library is for scientific computations at the research
level, and the current version is five years old.
I'm annoyed by the idea of increasing the soname myself -- isn't it
upstream's job?
It is upstream's job. But they did not do it.
(ideally one would increase it to something upstream will not likely
use, for example something non-nummerically).
Alternatives are:
- check if anything could actually break (the program coming with fplll
for example seems to run find with the new one even when compiled
against the old one, perhaps everything is always inlined and having
the .so in the old was not really needed).
- wait a stable release to get rid of the old one. This approach would
currently take a shorter amount of time than it sounds as we are in a
freeze so no new version cannot enter testing before wheezy is
released anyway. (To file a removal request use reportbug, chose
other, then release.debian.org, then rm then explain your cause).
_If_ the release team thinks it is a good idea to remove the fplll
package from wheezy with _this_ explanation given (you want to break
abi compatibility without changing the soname and can persuade them
that it is acceptable in this specific case), then I'd have no problem
in this regard to sponsor it even without the soname bump or further
analysis what kind of programs could be broken by it.
(Though I'm not doing any prediction whether there is also someone
else with less qualms who would upload it without any of the three).