libutil in Debian

[Konstantin Belousov]

On Tue, Jul 09, 2013 at 05:05:00PM +0200, Robert Millan wrote:
> Hi Gleb,
> 
> 2013/7/9 Gleb Smirnoff <glebius at freebsd.org>:
> > With all respect to GNU and Debian the libutil in BSD appeared in 1988,
> > and the fact that GNU has taken that name in 1996 isn't reason for BSD
> > to change name.
> 
> Thanks for pointing this out.
> 
> Please note that my request is only based on practical grounds. It
> shouldn't be interpreted as implying endorsement on Glibc's use of
> libutil name.
> 
> Historically, Glibc maintainer has been very difficult to deal with.
> This has affected non-Linux ports of Glibc as well. In contrast,
> FreeBSD community may or may not agree with proposals but is at least
> open to discuss things. This (rather than "fairness") is the reason I
> try to work things out here and not there.
> 
> Please take it as a compliment rather than as offence :-)
> 
> > Also, FreeBSD is just one of the BSD descendants, and all of them share
> > the libutil.
> 
> So, I take it that the change I'm proposing could have disruptive effects.
> 
> I do think there are long-term advantages for FreeBSD and the other
> BSD descendants in making it easy for their APIs to be deployed
> elsewhere. I mean, in terms of portability.
> 
> However I'm clearly biased so I'd rather not insist on this. I leave
> it for you to judge.

Renaming the libutil would break the ABI of the base system.
If you are introducing new interfaces to the other systems, you
can use a library name you find suitable.  But for the library
which is linked with significant number of existing binaries,
rename is not an easy option.
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