portupgrade and ICU libraries

[Mikhail T.]

Gentlemen!

Every time I do an upgrade, I get bitten by the same problem -- all of the 
software linked with libraries installed by devel/icu stops working.

Today I finally understood why... Although portupgrade duly backs up the old 
libraries under lib/compat/pkg, it only preserves the files (such as 
libicutu.so.48.1.1), and not the symbolic links (such as libicutu.so.48).

The proper fix for this problem should include both:

 1. portupgrade should ensure, the library.so./VERSION/ continues to exist --
    even when that in itself is a symlink
 2. icu port should install library.so./VERSION/ as the file -- rather than a
    symlink to library.so./VERSION/./MINOR/./MICRO/, as it currently does

Even if the icu-maintainers (CC-ed) change the icu port do comply with the 2., 
there may still be other ports, that are not so compliant, so portupgrade needs 
to implement 1. anyway...

Yours,

    -mi