Symbol versioning conventions (was Re: cvs commit: src/lib/libc/gen ...)

[Daniel Eischen]

On Sun, 26 Aug 2007, Yar Tikhiy wrote:
>
> But, anyway, there are at least three people in the project who
> misundertood the intended role of symbol versioning.  Besides yours
> truly, a humble developer, there are a core team member and a release
> engineer among them.  This may be a sign that some decisions regarding
> symbol versioning, which is a rather central feature for developers
> and code contributors, haven't had enough exposure.  Perhaps we've
> just missed some important discussions on the lists, but symbol
> versioning is a long-term feature and as such it deserves a document
> describing in detail how to use it in our project.

I've think I've stated in replies to commit mail that symbol versioning
isn't meant as a crutch to aid -current developers, but that is neither
written down or documented and was probably over a year ago.

> The technical side of symbol versioning puts few limitations on how
> one can use it, the rest being a matter of policy.  Of course, the
> choice of the policy is important and can have far-reaching
> consequences, such as getting us into a complete mess or making us
> technology champs like Linux and Sun. :-) Now all our symbols still
> are at FBSD_1.0, and it isn't late yet to work out such a policy.
> Again, it will make an excellent thread on -arch.

Here it is on -current, feel free to redirect it to arch.

I updated my notes on symbol versioning - see "Version naming conventions"
on downwards at:

   http://people.freebsd.org/~deischen/symver/freebsd_versioning.txt

Feel free to cut&paste anything from it in replies.

-- 
DE