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Packages depending on different versions of libraries



Hello,

for some libraries, there are different versions concurrently available, and
different packages are built with different versions of those libraries.

In such cases, this may cause different versions to be installed, even if
it's not really needed.

Example (atm on sarge):

% grep-status -FDepends -s Package libdb4.1 | grep -v db4.1 | wc -l
2
% grep-status -FDepends -s Package libdb4.2 | grep -v db4.2 | wc -l
7
% grep-status -FDepends -s Package libdb4.3 | grep -v db4.3 | wc -l
2

(that grep -v prevents packages libdb*-dev and libdb*-util from counting)

So: I have 3 different of libdb4 installed, version 4.2 because of 7
packages, and versions 4.1 and 4.3 each because of 2 packages.

The global situation is similar:

% grep-available -FDepends -s Package libdb4.1 | grep -v db4.1 | wc -l
21
% grep-available -FDepends -s Package libdb4.2 | grep -v db4.2 | wc -l
81
% grep-available -FDepends -s Package libdb4.3 | grep -v db4.3 | wc -l
15

I understand that there are cases when package doesn't compile or correctly
work with different version of library (and this it probably one of reasons
why do we have that many concurrent versions).

I also understand that sarge is currently in testing stage and the situation
may change a lot.

So my questions are:

- does it sound reasonable (when sarge is going to be frozen), to ask
  package maintainers to (try to) compile those packages with different
  versions of libraries?

For example, if libdb4.2 is mostly used, so some packages could be compiled
widh libdb4.2, so libdb4.1 and libdb4.3 would become useless on some systems
and could be uninstalled there (together with related packages).

- does anyone work on such cases (e.g. release manager)?

- or should I ask package maintainers to try recompiling?

Thank you.
-- 
Matus UHLAR - fantomas, uhlar@fantomas.sk ; http://www.fantomas.sk/
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