How to handle soname bump properly?

[Alex Lancaster]

>>>>> "PL" == Peter Lemenkov  writes:

PL> 2008/7/12, Todd Zullinger <tmz at pobox.com>:
>> Peter Lemenkov wrote:
>> > Consider, we got library libfoo and dependent utility bar.
>> >
>> > If I updated library libfoo (successfully built with soname >
>> increased, and ready to hit updates-testing via Bodhi), then how >
>> should I udate bar?

>> This is something that requires some help from rel-eng.  You would
>> build libfoo and then mail rel-eng at fedoraproject.org asking for a
>> build root override for libfoo (providing the full n-e-v-r or cvs
>> tag for the libfoo build you want to be in the build root) and
>> often some brief justification for the request (like, "I need this
>> to build bar against in order to fix outstanding bugs").
>> 
>> They sprinkle some pixie dust and let you know when it's done.
>> Then you can build bar against the new libfoo and push both of them
>> as a single update to updates-testing via bodhi.
>> 
>> (Of course, you should already have done some testing of this in
>> rawhide and locally for the affected stable release and thought
>> hard about whether a soname bump in the stable release warranted --
>> that the benefits of the bump outweigh the drawbacks.)

PL> Thanks!  Do you mind if I grab your post (partially) and bury it
PL> in Swamps of Fedora-Wiki?

It is already documented:

http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/ReleaseEngineering/SOP/BuildRootOverrides

although that page is buried in a somewhat obscure place that a casual
package maintainer would probably not know to look there.

It should probably linked from somewhere in the PackageMaintainers
namespace with a higher-level explanation like the text above.  This
kind of thing might be useful for the PackageMaintainers Tips/Tricks
page which I can't seem to locate the URL for right now (it isn't
linked from http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/PackageMaintainers)

As Todd said, you should request the buildroot override *before* you
push any packages to updates-testing so you can do them as a single
update.  That way prevents broken deps which should be discouraged
even in updates-testing.

Alex