[Pkg-crosswire-devel] API/ABI compatibility, and choice of SONAME for libsword

[Daniel Glassey]

On Sat, Jan 24, 2009 at 5:33 PM, Jonathan Marsden <jmarsden at fastmail.fm> wrote:
> Daniel Glassey wrote:
>
>>> "The upstream authors have the liberty of choosing two major methods for
>>> versioning using libtool. -version-info, and -release. -release is used
>>> for unstable libraries that change ABI on every new release. However,
>>> such unstable library package usually don't belong in Debian, because it
>>> will require a rebuild in every dependent package against the new
>>> library package."
>
>> which is this case is, practically speaking, irrelevant. All the
>> packages to be rebuilt are to be maintained within this group. It does
>> mean that the new sword lib can't be uploaded to non-experimental
>> until all the frontends can build on it, then sword gets uploaded and
>> autobuilt, then the frontends get uploaded. That is the way it has
>> been so far.
>
> All it takes is for one new application to come along that uses
> libsword... and since it *is* a library, IMO our packaging needs to
> treat it as *being* a library, and so allow for others deciding to use it.

True. But we can't change the history of upstream at least not up to
1.5.12 - it may be possible to be more rigorous in API changes after
the next release, but afaict some things like dynamic versification
which is major new functionality are still in flux so will probably
need changes. And anything using the library will have to get used to
changes and rebuilds like that.

> We have other work to do, and only a few weeks to do it... so my
> suggestion is to leave this the way it has been in Debian for years, and
> use libsword7 as the name and -version-info 7 in the build script,
> *unless* we can have the dialogue with the upstream deveopers that the
> Library Packaging Guide recommends, *and* such dialogue is likely to get
> us a rapid and positive result.

OK, let's stick to libsword7 for this release.

We can decide what we want to propose for the future after that.

Regards,
Daniel