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libkpathsea4-dev in NEW



Hi,

as you might know, the tetex-bin source package for experimental is
awaiting NEW processing because it contains new binary packages,
libkpathsea4 and libkpathsea4-dev (previously: libkpathsea3 and
libkpathsea-dev). 

In a mail to Anthony Towns, after a conversation on -devel, I agreed
with him that the development package should not have its name changed,
and asked him to reject the new packages.

I have changed my mind, and would be oblidged if you would let the
packages in. The reason is as follows:

Currently there is no documentation for libkpathsea but the source
itself, and there is also no other document that would list the
changes that caused the increase the soname. 

libkpathsea in its current state was never designed to be a dynamic
shared library, and in a recent message upstream discouraged using it as
such[1]. However, for people that previously did use it as a dynamic
library without problems[2], he said that they should keep on building it
until he is ready with a re-write that would yield a real, well-designed
library with a documented API.

Under these circumstances, I think it is better to force the maintainers
of programs that use it into having a closer look. Otherwise, there may
be changes that break things, perhaps only at runtime which might be
undetected for long. Therefore, I'd rather change the name. I expect
that the next teTeX release after the upcoming 3.0 will come with the
new library with a new name (libkpse).

Thanks in advance, Frank


[1] It seems he has become aware of the peculiarities of library
generation only recently

[2] and there weren't any substantial bug reports in the last years
-- 
Frank Küster
Inst. f. Biochemie der Univ. Zürich
Debian Developer

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