[PPL-devel] Re: RFC: packaging the PPL for RedHat and Debian

[Roberto Bagnara]

Matthew Mundell wrote:
>>I'd opt for
>>
>>- libppl<soversion>
>>- libppl-<language><soversion>
>>- libppl-dev
>>- libppl-doc
> 
> 
> An alternative:
> 
>  - libppl5
>  - libppl5-<language>
>  - libppl5-dev         ; which includes all interface dev
>  - libppl5-doc
> 
> Is 5 correct?  With the CVS head installed, this:
> 
>    objdump -p /usr/local/lib/libppl.so | grep SONAME
> 
> returns:
> 
>   SONAME      libppl.so.5

The name would have change from release to release, since we are nowhere
near to offer any kind of backward compatibility.  We cannot offer
source compatibility, let alone binary compatibility.  If this proposal
means we have to create by hand files called libppl<n>*
for <n> = 5, 6, 7, ... one unrelated from the other as far as CVS
is concerned, then I oppose this proposal.  Even automatizing
the creation of this files names libppl<n> from another source
with a stable name seems _really_ overkill at this stage.
Our 5 Debian users will have to uninstall the old PPL version when
installing a new one.  Keeping them both would be completely nonsensical
today and even two years from now.  The parallel with libc makes no sense:
in a GNU/Linux system _everything_  depends on libc, so there this
versioning thing is vital to make the system practically upgradable.

I propose we try to end up with something that works, to start with,
omitting the version number from the package names.
When we have something that works, then we will decide what to do...
trying not to forget that the best is the enemy of the good.

So Matthew, what do we miss to make this Debian packaging system
happy?
Ciao,

     Roberto

-- 
Prof. Roberto Bagnara
Computer Science Group
Department of Mathematics, University of Parma, Italy
http://www.cs.unipr.it/~bagnara/
mailto:bagnara at cs.unipr.it