On 06/02/2013 04:46 PM, Felix Natter wrote:
> hi,
>
> Freeplane depends on a number of libraries [1], and I guess the usual
> process for updating the package in case of an incompatible library
> upgrade, is to fix it upstream and include a patch until the package
> is updated to this upstream version.
>
> However, problems arise if there are packages for more than distro for
> upstream. e.g. Freeplane has packages for Debian and Mageia Linux and
> libjgoodies-forms-java has version 1.6 in Debian and version 1.4 in
> Mageia. 
> Since it's difficult for my colleague to update the jgoodies-forms
> package in Mageia, I am currently maintaining my own patch for 1.6
> indefinitely...
>
> libjgoodies-forms-java is probably a tough case [2]: deprecations are
> quickly removed and i.e. classes are renamed so that you can't support
> 1.4 and 1.6 in one codebase (unless you ship parts of jgoodies-forms in
> your package). (I was lucky with libcommons-io-java because Freeplane
> already uses 2.4)
>
> => is there a better approach to what I'm doing, i.e. fix upgrades
> quickly by adding patches and then arguing with my colleague about
> whether the patch can be applied upstream?
>
> => Under what conditions is the package renamed
> (i.e. "libjgoodies16-forms-java") if there are incompatible changes?
> Could you point me to the policy requirements?
Hi,
library should be renamed what there is an API  breakage.

In policy this refers to section 8.1 [0] for shared libraries. Though
talk is more about C shared libraries, same kind of policy must be
applied to Java libs, being also shared libraries.

Perhaps in your case, a specific libjgoodies14-forms-java should be kept.

Difficulty is to know that upstream API is broken if not specifically
documented in changelog file.


[0] http://www.debian.org/doc/debian-policy/ch-sharedlibs.html


Olivier
> Shouldn't I get a warning (notification of all reverse dependencies) or
> a post on debian-java if an incompatible update will be uploaded?
>
> I guess that such incompatible updates are only common in the early
> development phase and not so much when move towards stable?
>
> [1] 
> http://freeplane.sourceforge.net/wiki/index.php/Dependencies_and_Linux_Packaging#Dependencies
> [2] I am not the only one with this, see #706925.
>
> Thanks and Best Regards,
>
> -- 
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