Bug#784009: Segmentation fault

[Niels Möller]

Magnus Holmgren <holmgren at debian.org> writes:

> Not sure how this situation is normally handled, but when Nettle 3.1 is 
> uploaded to sid, new versions of GnuTLS and other packages linking against it 
> should follow soon after [1], so the problem is temporary.

As I understand it, the problem is applications like wget which link
explicitly with both gnutls and nettle (and this is the usecase I had in
mind when I at last decided to do symbol versioning in nettle). To be
able to install new nettle and gnutls without crashing wget, either wget
has to be relinked first, or we need some magic packaging dance.

> [1] That is, Nettle 3.1 will be uploaded to sid when the current upload to 
> experimental has been cleared by the FTP masters and GnuTLS is ready to 
> follow,

The question is, when will an updated version of wget (and other
applications) follow?

I don't fully understand debian transitions either, but to be able to
get a smooth upgrade to nettle-3.x in the next release (and for users
that mix wget from jessie and nettle from testing), I suspect one has to
do something like:

1. Package a new "libnettle4" package which is a nettle-2.7.x with
   versioned symbols. For now, let's call it nettle-2.7.2.

2. Get this package into jessie as an update.

3. Package nettle-3.x (x >= 1) as "libnettle5", and declare some kind of
   package conflict with libnettle4 versions earlier than the one
   prepared in (1).

Now, it's still a bit unclear to me how versioned symbols really work.
Is it still necessary to relink the wget executable? Or will the
combination of

* Current wget package, linking to gnutls and libnettle4.so,

* a new gnutls package, linking to a libnettle5-package containing
  nettle-3.1

* libnettle4.so from the nettle-2.7.2 release under consideration, i.e.,
  with versioned symbols,

work and resolve all symbols correctly? I.e., all direct references to
nettle symbols in wget should get definitions in libnettle4.so, and all
references via gnutls should get definitions in libnettle5.so.

BTW, Magnus, are you subscribed to the nettle-bugs list? Some of this
discussion belongs there.

Regards,
/Niels

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