building against libgnutls28-dev or libgnutls-dev

[Andreas Metzler]

On 2012-06-22 Mike Miller <mtmiller at ieee.org> wrote:
> What is the recommendation or policy about build-depending on
> libgnutls28-dev instead of libgnutls-dev?

> Specifically, it looks to me like all packages in the archive
> build-depend on libgnutls-dev, only gnutls28 itself links with
> libgnutls28.

Hello,

Short answer: I would suggest to keep using libgnutls-dev at least
until wheezy is released.

Due to its dependencies (gmp via nettle) the newer version
brings a license change (LGPLv2.1+ -> LGPLv3+, therefore incompatible
with GPLv2) and can therefore not be used by everything, most notably
cups. As a complete switch was not possible (in time for wheezy) we
kept using gnutls26.

> So other than
> 1. name difference in source package build-depends to keep track of
> 2. not being able to link with any other libs that may in turn link
> with libgnutls26
> any other reasons not to do it if one needs a feature in the 3.0 series?

> Note: I don't plan to do this due to [2] above in my case, but I was
> asked if it's possible and I'm curious under what cases it could or
> couldn't be done in Debian.

[2] should not exist. As both gnutls versions use versioned
symbols there should not be any hard breakage.

cu andreas
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