Re: tips for checking changes to library version numbers?

[Ralf Wildenhues]

Hi Brian,

* Brian Gough wrote on Thu, Nov 27, 2008 at 08:34:45PM CET:
> 
> Does anyone have any good ways to check that updates to -version-info
> numbers accurately reflect the actual changes in the API of a library
> when making a new release?
> 
> Currently I do this by (1) comparing 'nm' output against the old
> library to find any added/deleted functions (2) manually inspecting a
> diff of the header files (3) looking at the accumulated NEWS/Changelog
> entries for possible changes in semantics.

Sounds good.  A test suite with good coverage of the API definitely
helps, too.  If it can do 'installcheck', then you can try running
the suite of the old version on the new installed files.  If the
library has seen only upward compatible changes since, then it should
even work to run programs linked against the old library, when linking
it to the new one at runtime.  Of course this is pretty system-specific
to do.  Unfortunately, libtool doesn't help much with it.  On most
GNU/Linux systems, you can try it by setting LD_LIBRARY_PATH
appropriately to divert old installed(!) programs to use (elsewhere)
installed new libraries.

Cheers,
Ralf