[RFC] xulrunner, shlibs, and dependencies.

[Steve Langasek]

On Sat, Dec 03, 2005 at 08:58:45AM +0100, Mike Hommey wrote:
> > > So my idea is the following :
> > > - First, I want to provide the libs with a correct soname. It won't be
> > > compatible with upstream until some people use clue sticks, but i'll do
> > > my best for them to improve on that point. Having a correct soname will
> > > enable us to actually use the shlibs mecanism.

> > > - Now, the problem is that we can't really use the sonames correctly,
> > > because if we succeed in the clue stick batting, we'll have different
> > > sonames, which, in the long term, would be painful. So, I'd like to
> > > provide a dummy gecko-x.y-serial or such package, which would correctly
> > > depend on the libxul package (with strict version if necessary), and the
> > > .shlibs in the libxul-dev package would say to depend on the
> > > gecko-x.y-serial package.

> > If you don't want to make up sonames (and I think having debian-specific
> > sonames is fine, personally), I think that having libxul provide a virtual
> > package to use in dependencies is the best option (whether that's
> > gecko-x.y-serial, or libxul1debianX, makes no real difference).

> Will all the tools resolving the dependencies be fine with a dependency
> on a virtual package without one an a real package ? (like for
> zlib1g-dev | libz-dev)

Yes.  See apt's Provides for an example of this.

> > There are two advantages to managing sonames even when upstream does not:
> > it lets you interface better with un-packaged software (but *only* if that
> > software is built against the Debian version!), and it allows
> > co-installability of different library versions.  You need to decide whether
> > these features are important enough for your application to warrant spinning
> > your own sonames.  (My guess is no.)

> My concern is more about what it becomes when we hopefully get upstream
> to use sonames. Someone suggested me to use specific sonames like
> libxul.so.d1. Does that really work ? Do shlibs work as well with that ?

> If this is the case, I think i have my solution...

Yes, sonames can be more or less arbitrary strings.  You can certainly use
sonames with "debian" in them with a fairly high degree of confidence that
upstream won't collide with them.

-- 
Steve Langasek                   Give me a lever long enough and a Free OS
Debian Developer                   to set it on, and I can move the world.
vorlon at debian.org                                   http://www.debian.org/
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