That ole Livna Problem/That ole VLC Problem

[Michael Schwendt]

On 16/01/2008, Les Mikesell wrote:
>
> If your library has a different name, how can it conflict?

A different name in RPM space is insufficient as long as the library
sonames in run-time linker's space are not different, too.

> Or even if
> your application puts your library location first in a search path?

That *is* possible already, but requires lots of extra efforts at the
packaging-front. And you don't want per-application local libraries
instead of system libraries, do you?

> > Notice that several libraries and applications can even be built with
> > a different feature-set.
>
> Which is why multiple versions should be expected to co-exist.

The howto that can be applied to a large-scale packaging project like
Fedora is missing. You don't want extra burden for volunteers with
questionable or no benefit.

> > Even multiple major releases of libraries
> > cannot coexist peacefully, if not all packagers take extra (sometimes
> > huge) efforts to avoid conflicts between data/doc/development files,
> > and e.g. package them as "libfoo2" and "libfoo3".
>
> Doesn't that tell you something?

Yes, it tells me a lot, but that is beyond the scope of this thread.