[Kde-imaging] [RFC] libraries policy

[Achim Bohnet]

On Wednesday, 12. September 2007, Angelo Naselli wrote:
> Hi,
> new libraries libkdcraw and libkexiv2 recall to me a problem 
> we could have in the near future. Since kde 3.5 is the stable branch
> and kde 4 is in trunk and developers go fast ;) we should pay attention
> on the version we release, and in a particular manner to the version-info
> (libtools stuff).
> 
> What I'm afraid for is that we could have an .so version that is equal or
> compatible for both the systems -kde3 and kde4- and that could be a 
> nonsense.

Yes, this can be a real problem.  So some possibilities would be
(version of release is unrelated to ABI versioning)

  1) promise to never break ABI backward compatibility in KDE3 version.
    ==> we never need to change soname ;)

  2) set revision to, e.g., 10 for KDE4 version.  So we have 2..9 for API
    changes in KDE3

  3) Reserve even 'current' ABI numbers for KDE4 and odd ones for KDE3.

  4) use libk4dcraw and libk4exiv2 as the name for KDE4 libs.  Or find a
     fancy name like other KDE4 project did ;)


From distribution (and their users) point of 4) give the least problems. One
can even install development files for both version in parallel.  And no
conflicts/provides/replaces fiddling necessary.

Achim
> 
> A simple and silly way could be to force to have a new release for kde-4, not back
> compatible with the parameter "-release" [1]

As version of release is unrelated to ABI versioning.  Release can only be
considered a bad ugly hack/workaround.

Achim
> 
> WDYT?
> 	Angelo
> 
> [1] http://sourceware.org/autobook/autobook/autobook_91.html#SEC91
> 



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