ABI and KDE binary compatibility

[Harald Sitter]

On Wed, Dec 18, 2013 at 7:19 PM, Michael Stemle <themanchicken at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hey guys, this is probably a dumb question, but I'm working on libqapt and
> I'm trying to figure out if I've broken binary compatibility. It looks like
> there are a few utilities out there to help you detect when you do, but I'm
> not seeing anything terribly simple and I'm wondering if there's a process
> already being used here. If you know of such a utility or method, let me
> know. If I just sit here and compare symbol files it's going to take much
> longer.

I used [1] for Phonon at some point in the past. However it then broke
because of multiarch and I have not tried it since. Maybe it works
again.

Otherwise you could simply throw the debian directory of the packaged
libqapt into your source and run dpkg-buildpackage -us -uc -b,
assuming the package has symbol tracking it should tell you if you
broke ABI (if it does not I am sure you can find a packager to help
you introduce symbol tracking).

Personally I usually just check if I am not sure whether a change
would be binary compatible [2] (very proactive xD).

[1] http://ispras.linuxbase.org/index.php/ABI_compliance_checker
[2] http://techbase.kde.org/Policies/Binary_Compatibility_Issues_With_C%2B%2B

HS