[Fedora-packaging] updating versions policy

[Michael Schwendt]

On Fri, 15 Jul 2005 01:09:01 -0700, Michael A. Peters wrote:

> I know that with shared libraries, it generally is not a good idea to
> push an update that involves versioning a shared library because the
> user may have software their system that is linked against the older
> shared library, but is there a general policy about other software?

With "versioning a shared library" here you mean a change in SONAME?

> One of the packages I maintain in Extras is likely to be named as a
> sourceforge project of the month. The upstream developer is working
> overtime to finish implementing some things before that happens. The
> package is gourmet (PyGTK recipe manager) and absolutely nothing depends
> upon it - and I'm thinking that when he has these things finished, that
> might be a good time to update the package in Extras.
> 
> Since it is not a package which is designed to have anything else depend
> on it, I'm assuming there is not a problem with a version update in
> Extras? Is that the case?

If your package is the only one which accesses the shared libs, no
problem. This is most certainly the case when the package doesn't provide
a public API and if no other package implements an API either. Hence:
no dependencies in Extras => don't worry about upgrades.