[csw-maintainers] sendmail and dbus packages

[Sebastian Kayser]

Philip Brown wrote on 02.09.2009 23:16:
> On Wed, Sep 2, 2009 at 12:16 PM, Dagobert Michelsen<dam at opencsw.org> wrote:
>> Am 02.09.2009 um 19:00 schrieb Philip Brown:
>>> I previously suggested/requested that our berkeleydb maintainer(s),
>>> repackage the "berkeleyedb4" package, to include the old binaries for
>>> the shared libs, until they are no longer used.
>>> This basically echos our "normal" policies about shared libs.
>> This[standard?] policy is there to avoid having multiple packages with
>> one version each. Currently we already have multiple packages
>> and correct dependencies to each package version. There is no
>> need to put all in one package. Essentially, you say "go back
>> to the old scheme and let's see that we update all builds
>> to old versions".
> 
> That "old scheme" is a bit ambigous. Lets be a bit more explicit, and
> say "go back to CSW STANDARD scheme".
> 
> And lets continue to be explicit and spell out the future path for berkeleydb:
> 
> Once applications have been recompiled to no longer use berkeleydb4X
> versions of the shared libs, that versioned virtual package should be
> completely removed from our repository.
> 
> older berkeleydb4X packages should be in transition to non-existance,
> once their dependants are gone.

I didn't jump in on the discussion where Dago initially requested
feedback for the bdb packaging change [1], but as the bdb stuff caused
some hickups some wider discussion might help.

Just to understand the status quo:

- We do have a CSWbdb package which currently holds 4.7.x, lives in
  /opt/csw/lib (/opt/csw/lib/libdb.so to be precise), and which might
  get upgraded to 4.7+ sometime in the future?

- Previous CSWbdb packages (like CSWbdb44) lived within their own
  /opt/csw/lib/bdb4X/ prefix and have been replaced by stub packages
  containting symlinks to /opt/csw/lib/libdb.so to preserve
  functionality of existing packages?

- Packages linked against previous CSWbdb packages should be changed
  to link against /opt/csw/lib/libdb.so (or to a symlink named
  libdb-4.7.so which is also installed by CSWbdb)?

Now that we have a "moving version" libdb.so file (plus already existing
packages linked against previous versions), the one question that comes
to my mind is ABI compatibility? Dago mentioned BDB should be ABI
backward-compatible, but i couldn't find any page actually saying so.
The only thing i found sounds a bit like the opposite [2]:

"Berkeley DB major and minor releases may optionally include changes in
all four areas, that is, the application API, region files, database
formats, and log files may not be backward-compatible with previous
releases."

I know API != ABI, but API changes can break ABI compatibility and i
couldn't come up with a reference that guarantees ABI compatibility.

Sebastian

[1]http://lists.opencsw.org/pipermail/maintainers/2009-May/002726.html
[2]http://www.oracle.com/technology/documentation/berkeley-db/db/ref/upgrade/process.html