Colin Watson wrote: > On Sun, Jul 28, 2002 at 04:34:54PM +0200, Santiago Vila wrote: > > We should make versioned -dev (binary) packages the exception, not > > the norm. libglut-dev is better. Think about libglut3-dev, > > libglut4-dev, libglut5-dev etc. and how libglut-dev makes upgrades > > much easier. > > Except that this means the old source packages can't stay around in the > archive, since libglut-dev is generated by both old and new. > > This makes transitions more difficult: libglut3 and libglut4 could > still coexist on users' systems, but they could not both be in a > distribution at the same time.
AFAIK, katie supports that several packages generate the same binary package and the new one takes precedence; but even if this feature has been disabled, we can always repackage the old library so that it only generates the old library package, not the -dev one. By providing a single -dev package on each given distribution, we avoid the user the need to investigate about which one is the "good" one to be used. I think this is good and desirable for most libraries. Oohara Yuuma wrote: > 1. libfoo1 is compiled with libglut3 (that is, libglut-dev) > 2. bar is compiled with libfoo1 > 3. libfoo1 is recompiled with libglut4 (that is, again, libglut-dev) > 4. old bar does not work with new libfoo1 > 5. the maintainer of libfoo1 gets flamed because he/she is careless > when using libglut-dev, though there is no good[1] way to specify > a build-dependency to avoid this flame before libglut4 is released > (that is, without knowing the version number of libglut-dev for libglut4) Nobody should be flamed for not having a crystal ball... Build-Depends: libfoo-dev (>= whatever) could be used here if needed (I mean, if a package has to be reuploaded using a versioned build-depends). Yes, this may happen. I never said a single -dev should be always better. There will be libraries for which a single -dev is a good idea and others for which it's not. Of course, libraries which do not keep enough backwards source-compatiblity across different releases are the typical case where a single -dev package does not help very much. But those libraries should be the exception too, not the norm. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
