On Sun, 09 Mar 2003, Sam Hartman wrote: > >> I think that we should implement versioned symbols. > Anthony> Uhh, versioned symbols means that programs built on > Anthony> Debian systems won't run elsewhere. That's not something > Anthony> we should be doing, except in very specific cases where > Anthony> the gain outweighs the drawback. > > I believe that the gain outweighs the drawback in any core library > that can drag in plugins unrelated to the application. In particular, > I believe that versioned symbols should be used at a minimum for > dependencies of SASL plugins, PAM modules and NSS modules.
Agreed. As far as "programs build on Debian systems won't run elsewhere", it is just a matter of pushing the versioning of said core libraries to the LSB, which shouldn't be too difficult if we do it right and send in patches. > Certainly in cases where we want to add versioned symbols we should > work as hard as possible with the upstreams to accept these changes. Indeed. Here's a plan of things to do for that to happen (based on my experience with SASL upstream): 1. Write an autoconf macro that handles detection on the availability of symbol versioning in a platform. Document the procedure so that we can send the algorithm instead for upstream not using autoconf. 2. Write an autoconf macro that changes the libtool variables needed to version something. 3. Write an autoconf macro that sets the linker/cc options needed to version something. 4. Send a full patch upstream that is plug-and-play, and defaults to versioning enabled where available. 5. Always use a non-dumb version prefix of "IDmajor" such as "SASL2" in the proposed patch (or "ID_major", or minor variations of that), using a proper ID that won't cause headaches later. CMUSASL2 would be another example of a good ID for Cyrus SASL versioning. 6. Send email to d-d-a with a url where we document all the issues with versioning, their workarounds, and our sample scripts. Send email to contacts in other linux distributions with said url. Push it at the LSB mailing lists, with a proposal of the core libraries that need versioning first and foremost. -- "One disk to rule them all, One disk to find them. One disk to bring them all and in the darkness grind them. In the Land of Redmond where the shadows lie." -- The Silicon Valley Tarot Henrique Holschuh
