Build-depends: and Depends:

Emmet Hikory emmet.hikory at gmail.com
Wed May 7 17:53:09 BST 2008


Cesare Falco wrote:
>  One more thing: Debian Policy recommends filing a bug against library
>  packages which supply wrong shlibs files asking to fix them.
>
>  Does this apply in Ubuntu too?

    It does indeed, but the guideline is to only bump the required
minimum dependencies when there is an incompatible change.  If the
newer release only fixes some bugs, without changes to the call
interface, it's likely not actually important that things compiled
against it carry a dependency against the newest version.  In general,
the following is a reasonable guideline:

If the ABI changes in an incompatible way, change the binary package
name (and update shlibs)
If the ABI changes in a compatible way (but is not reverse
compatible), bump the shlibs
If the ABI does not change, leave the shlibs with the older version


    Examples of the first are API extensions, changes in the
definition of variables (e.g. long -> long double), changes to the
underlying toolset, etc.

    The second usually only happens when new calls are added, but all
old calls are still supported.  The third usually only happens when
upstream releases a bugfix maintenance release.

-- 
Emmet HIKORY



More information about the Ubuntu-motu-mentors mailing list