libfoo<major> (was: Incoming: directfb soname problems)

[Tom 'spot' Callaway]

On Sun, 2006-05-14 at 21:12 +0200, Thorsten Leemhuis wrote:
> Am Sonntag, den 14.05.2006, 20:37 +0200 schrieb Nicolas Mailhot:
> > Le Dim 14 mai 2006 07:13, Michael A. Peters a écrit :
> > > On Sun, 2006-05-14 at 00:25 +0200, Axel Thimm wrote:
> > >> Maybe it's time to think about packaging so into their separate
> > >> libfoo<major> subpackages like Debian/Mandrake/ATrpms are doing? This
> > >> always ensures forward and backward compatibility at the cost of dead
> > >> libfoo<major> packages lying around.
> > > I semi agree.
> > And I semi disagree.
> 
> How about a policy like this:
> 
> ---
> Package updates in Fedora Extras to new upstream version are allowed for
> stable Core versions as long as the soname of the provided libs doesn't
> change. 
> 
> Updates with soname changes are okay if the packager takes care of one
> of the following steps: 
> 
> a) you create and provide a compat-package with the old lib in it. The
> compat-package of course needs to be parallel-installable with the new
> version.

Also, the new "compat" package needs to be reviewed as if it were a new
package. We've already set precedent for this with wxGTK.

Otherwise, I'm in total agreement here.

~spot
-- 
Tom "spot" Callaway: Red Hat Senior Sales Engineer || GPG ID: 93054260
Fedora Extras Steering Committee Member (RPM Standards and Practices)
Aurora Linux Project Leader: http://auroralinux.org
Lemurs, llamas, and sparcs, oh my!