[csw-maintainers] An idea for a shared libraries policy

James Lee james at opencsw.org
Tue Sep 28 11:00:13 CEST 2010


On 28/09/10, 01:23:50, Maciej "(Matchek)" Blizinski <maciej at opencsw.org> 
wrote regarding Re: [csw-maintainers] An idea for a shared libraries 
policy:

> > once you step into that realm things become more messy.
> > remember that upstream numbering is sometimes out of sync with the lib
> > numbering.
> >
> > your proposal may "simplify" the number of versions of a library per
> > package . however, it will *add* complexity to the naming and package
> > building process in other ways.
> >
> > I'm not neccessarily against it. I'm just pointing out it isn't
> > neccessarily the "simple" choice

> It's true.  Specifically problematic are bits of software that already
> embed a number in the package name, or the soname.  For example
> apache2rt package contains libapr-1.so.0.  The corresponding pkgname
> would be something along the lines of CSWlibapr10 or CSWlibapr-10, or
> other punctuation variants.  These names aren't strikingly pretty, but
> I think it's possible to make them consistent.

These packages are only used as dependencies so the naming doesn't have
to be appealing.  No user should need to directly install a run time.
They should even be in the list offered to users, only the top level
names should be, like jpeg, python.


> Another thing is, that we don't need to put every shared library in a
> separate packages.

Only when the SONAME changes and it's incompatible, like major version
changes on software, eg, apache2.


> This policy would only apply to libraries that
> other packages link to.  If a shared library is linked to only by
> binaries from the same package, there's no benefit from separating out
> the libraries.

Yes there is, it may change later.  That's why we are where we are,
because in the first place there isn't a need.



James.



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