[Debian-med-packaging] libSBML versioning

Steffen Moeller steffen_moeller at gmx.de
Thu Jul 17 12:57:12 UTC 2008


Hello again,

Moriyoshi Koizumi wrote:
> On Wed, Jul 16, 2008 at 6:37 PM, Andreas Tille <tillea at rki.de> wrote:
>> On Wed, 16 Jul 2008, Moriyoshi Koizumi wrote:

[...]

> 
> Confirmed, thanks. I'm thinking of renaming libsbml1 to libsbml2
> because its .so file is versioned like 2.x.x.

In some deep theory the so names should only change when the API changes.
There will be multiple versions of some library that have the same soname
then, if I am not erroneous. The name of the binary package should
then contain the soname, not the version. This way, a binary package
will not be removed when a new version of a (source) package arrives.
In this sense it would make perfect sense, to keep the name libsbml with
no number as a source package name. However, things become somewhat annoying
when you would want to compile multiple versions of a library in a single
binary, e.g., a converter between sbml2 to sbml3. For that, one would need
multiple -dev packages with header files. It would then indeed make sense
to have different source package names, too.

> BTW, debian-med hosts the e-cell package separately from ours. I'm
> more than willing to take it over. If there is anyone who is
> interested in maintaining the e-cell package, I guess we better have a
> talk so let me know.

As Andreas already explained in his mail, that e-cell package is free
to be adopted or substituted with something better. Many thanks for asking.
We are very keen to see your update on this front, too !!

>>> Everything looked pretty well so far, except the
>>> package naming / versioning issue. Because the API is different, I
>>> don't think it's a good idea to keep the two in the same repository.
>>> In addition, I think it's probable that the packages for the two
>>> releases are provided separately at the same time: namely, libsbml2
>>> and libsbml3.
>> This is surely possible.  The question is rather: Are there users for
>> all versions and do we have enough man power to support all of them.
>> Traditionally the latest version of a project is maintained in Debian
>> and there is often a period of transition where an older and a newer
>> version coexist.  To simplify this transistion keeping the version
>> number in the package name is a reasonable thing to do.
> 
> The current stable release of E-Cell system is version 3, which
> depends on libsbml version 2. So I'd rather make sure that libsbml
> version 2 is provided indeed :) I hope someone will take care of
> libsbml version 3. That would help me a lot.

I am fairly confident that some good soul will eventually continue on that
front. It will not be of an immediate effect, though.

Please inform us when you want some second and third pair of eyeballs to
look over your package and/or you want to see it sponsored.

Best,

Steffen




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