Dependency hell

[Erik Trulsson]

On Mon, Apr 19, 2004 at 01:34:34PM -0500, Ziller, James wrote:
> So then is there a way that the ports/package system can automatically
> handle replacing libfoo.so.3 with libfoo.so.4, so that packages compiled to
> use libfoo.so.3 can use libfoo.so.4 instead (assuming the new version is
> backward compatable)?

You can't assume that.  The version numbers of libraries are only
supposed to be changed when the new version is *NOT* backwards
compatible with the old.
I.e.  libfoo.so.4 is most likely not completely compatible with
libfoo.so.3 and any programs that are compiled against libfoo.so.3 need
to be recompiled to use libfoo.so.4

>  Or can the port link against say libfoo.so (which
> should be a symlink to the version of the library that's installed)?
> 
> Thanks for the responses,
> James
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Charles Swiger [mailto:cswiger at mac.com] 
> Sent: Monday, April 19, 2004 1:18 PM
> To: Ziller, James
> Cc: 'freebsd-questions at freebsd.org'
> Subject: Re: Dependency hell
> 
> 
> On Apr 19, 2004, at 10:28 AM, Ziller, James wrote:
> > So in other words I do have to recompile everything that depends on a
> > given
> > library just because that library is updated to a slightly newer 
> > version?:(
> 
> Well, you could simply use the old version of the library.
> 
> It's not especially hard to write code in a way that maintains upwards 
> compatibility-- putting a version # or sizeof(struct foo) in structures 
> being passed around helps!-- but some projects don't bother.
> 
> -- 
> -Chuck
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-- 
<Insert your favourite quote here.>
Erik Trulsson
ertr1013 at student.uu.se