Let's do SOVERSION according to traditions and documentation

[Sune Vuorela]

On 2026-02-23, Vlad Zahorodnii <vlad.zahorodnii at kde.org> wrote:
> In plasma, we operate under different conditions. We can break ABI 
> there. On the other hand, if you consider KF, you cannot break API or 
> ABI compatibility, so you could lock the SOVERSION at the major version 
> and have them both match.
>
> In plasma, since we can break ABI (we even moved some projects to plasma 
> in order to be able to make breaking changes), locking the SOVERSION 
> like that is simply not applicable.

I'm not talking about not doing abi breaking, but doing it in a way
where you don't make reviewers of the binary packaging stumble.
We should make it straight and easy.

the VERSION and SOVERSION attributes of libraries are not userfacing
components and we should not treat any of them as such.

While the tool allows you to do weird things, one shouldn't.

We unfortunately seem to treat the VERSION attribute of libraries as
userfacing components, rather than a historic library quirk.

/Sune