libutil in Debian

[Warner Losh]

On Jul 9, 2013, at 10:59 AM, Konstantin Belousov wrote:

> 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.

Can we use libmap.conf to create an alias for the new name on FreeBSD so that programs that link against libbsdutil, to pick an arbitrary name, can work and libbsdutil can be packaged for debian? This will allow things to be portable, while allowing repackaging by Debian.

Warner