[Julian Foad] > So it sounds like if we were to make the build system effectively > require (or even automatically perform) a "make uninstall" before > "make", that would solve it.
That's effectively what we did in the Debian packaging a long long time ago (2005, for 1.2.0). My 1.6.x metadata says "Build-Conflicts: libsvn-dev (<< 1.6)", which causes a build process to fail if you have the old stuff installed (automated builds will just remove the old stuff at this point, if necessary). I agree with you that it isn't really an option in a less controlled environment than Debian package building. But yes, I'd support at least a big fat warning if autoconf can manage to link to, say, -lsvn_subr-1, before the build. Notice, btw, that the ability to link to something is different from the ability to run a program that is linked to it. On a Linux ELF platform, for example, there are two filenames that are important (both are symlinks to a third file): libsvn_foo-1.so used by the linker, _not_ used by applications later libsvn_foo-1.so.0 used by applications later, _not_ used by the linker Therefore (still assuming Linux ELF), if you remove libsvn_foo-1.so from its installed location, that should prevent this problem without breaking installed apps. Other platforms probably have similar distinctions, though perhaps with other filenames. -- Peter Samuelson | org-tld!p12n!peter | http://p12n.org/