[Pkg-vsquare-devel] Bug#610933: Bug#610933: libvdeplug3 declares a conflict with libvdeplug2

[Ludovico Gardenghi]

On Mon, Nov 28, 2011 at 05:34:31 -0600, Jonathan Nieder wrote:

> > Indeed the conflict will be needed with the next release, as we're
> > much probably going to move libvdeplug.so from the -dev package to the
> > shared library one
> 
> That violates policy §8.1 "Run-time shared libraries" and would make
> smooth upgrades of packages that use the shared library difficult.

I understand that putting a .so symlink, in general, is against the
policy. Yet I saw this sentence at the beginning of chapter 8:

    "[...] the bare .so symlink is installed in the development package
    since it's only used when linking binaries or shared libraries.
    However, there are some exceptions for unusual shared libraries or
    for shared libraries that are also loaded as dynamic modules by
    other programs."

This is the case with libvdeplug: it's both linked at compile time and
dlopen()ed at runtime, depending on the software which uses it.
Do you think it would still be a policy violation?

(In any case, I still can't figure out what should be the *proper* way
for a program for dlopening a .so while providing the version number...
should it loop over all the (infinite :-)) possible SONAMEs who offer
compatibility for the needed interface version?

> > (since several virtualization tools which use VDE
> > call dlopen with the non-versioned name, see #536373 for example).
> 
> Would it be possible to make a different package, such as vde2,
> provide the non-versioned symlink, and such packages depend on it?

It would be unpractical to put the .so symlink in the vde2 package,
since then the -dev one should depend on vde2 (if I'm not wrong). Should
we create a tiny package with only a single symlink in it? I haven't
checked yet how other packagers solved the problem, so maybe the
solution already exists :-)...

Thanks,
Ludovico
-- 
<lu at dovi.co>                                        IRC: garden at freenode
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