Bug#790509: libmpfi-dev: transitional package uninstallable

[Andreas Beckmann]

On 2015-07-02 11:11, Vincent Lefevre wrote:
> On 2015-06-30 01:31:38 +0200, Jerome BENOIT wrote:
>> On 30/06/15 00:38, Andreas Beckmann wrote:
>>> PS: Is it really necessary to switch from an unversioned -dev package
>>> to a versioned one?
>>
>> For consistency ?
> 
> I'm not sure, but this will have the drawback that packages which
> depend or build-depend on the -dev package will have to be updated
> if its name changes (due to a backward incompatible change in the
> libmpfi ABI).

I think the general consensus is to have more unversioned -dev packages
to ease transitions, since in most cases a binNMU will be sufficient to
pick up the dependency on the new SONAME.
Even historically versioned ones have transitioned to unversioned ones
(e.g. tiff3, tiff4 -> tiff). Also -dev package versioning (if needed) is
usually by "project version", not by SOVERSION (the two tiffs have/had
SOVERSIONS 4 and 5, respectively, which may be a bit confusing: you
built against libtiff3-dev and got a dependency on libtiff4).


Andreas