Re: Alternate SONAME values

[Ganesan Rajagopal]

>>>>> "Russ" == Russ Allbery <address@hidden> writes:

> Ganesan Rajagopal <address@hidden> writes:
>> I didn't know this. But trying to make -version-info get the SONAME you
>> need is an abuse of libtool in any case. I think -version-number option
>> available in recent versions of libtool is perfect for this.

> When introducing libtool with a libraries like X that have a
> well-established SONAME, one does not get to change the SONAME just
> because new applications using libtool shouldn't try to override the
> SONAME.  It may be libtool abuse in a new application with no established
> library versioning, but for X, it's the difference between a working build
> system and a broken build system.

Please re-read what I said :-). Using "-version-info" (note that this is a
different option) to get the SONAME correct is an abuse of libtool because
you can't expect it to work reliably. However, using "-version-number" is
not an abuse, it's available for exactly this reason. Once again from the
libtool manual

=======
`-version-number MAJOR[:MINOR[:REVISION]]'
     If OUTPUT-FILE is a libtool library, compute interface version
     information so that the resulting library uses the specified
     major, minor and revision numbers.  This is designed to permit
     libtool to be used with existing projects where identical version
     numbers are already used across operating systems.  New projects
     should use the `-version-info' flag instead.
=======

> There are ten-year-old binaries that expect a particular SONAME for the X
> libraries and can't simply be rebuilt.  It's very, very important that
> they not break.

We're very much in agreement :-).

Ganesan

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Ganesan Rajagopal (rganesan at debian.org) | GPG Key: 1024D/5D8C12EA
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