Re: Anyone with Fedora RPM packages already?

[Buchan Milne <bgmilne@mandriva.org>]

On Tuesday 17 June 2008 11:43:43 Harald Barth wrote:
> > Isn't this what the different numbered .so versions are for?
>
> No. That is used to be able to tell apart older and newer versions
> of the same library.

Well, versions of the same library with different ABI ... a software version 
change without an ABI change doesn't necessitate a new major library number 
(though a new minor number could be justified for non-ABI changes in the 
library).

> Some pointer to a good article on the behaviour and design of the
> dynamic linker would be appreciated.
>
> A system without rpath means you have one of the following alternatives:
>
>   * Rename all libraries so that there are no confliciting names. This
>     means editing all Makefiles that use those libraries, too.
>
>   * LD_LIBRARY_PATH wrapper scrips for all such programs using such
>     libraries.
>
>   * Only support one of the conflicting libraries.

Or, support only one of the conflicting libraries for development at one time, 
and hope that the major versions of the runtime libraries don't ever 
match ...

>   * Static linking

Part of the problem here is that the design is for a drop-in replacement, but 
the only method (rpath) viable for a drop-in replacement co-existing is not 
desirable (I haven't read the Fedora policy, but IIRC there was a valid 
reason for it).

Regards,
Buchan