RFC: ABI break

[Robert Millan]

On Thu, Dec 29, 2005 at 10:50:18AM +0100, Aurelien Jarno wrote:
> On Sat, Dec 24, 2005 at 03:59:07AM +0100, Petr Salinger wrote:
> > Hi.
> > 
> > I thought about it, here is an another approach:
> > 
> > Bump soname intentionally to libc0.2 and clean up our glibc interface.
> 
> Bumping the soname is tricky, because it implies rebuilding all packages
> in the archive, respecting the dependencies (which is even more
> difficult for packages which needs themselves like gnat or ghc6). Have a
> look at the c++ transition in Debian, and it is only a small part of the
> packages. Moreover, it won't be possible to change the packages name to
> track the changes, so this will be probably lead to package loading both
> version of the libc at runtime, which causes crashes.
> 
> I don't say we should not change the soname, but we should avoid that if
> possible. If it is not possible, we should do it, but I expect a
> duration of one or two months.

I think we don't need more problems than what we have.  If ABI changes can be
handled with versioning, we could even diverge from upstream and keep 0.1
where they have 1, in case upstream wanted to start with 1.

Note, however, that as long as there's no real ABI change, bumping the soname
doesn't imply great effort.  Having both libcs loaded in memory is harmless,
since they're the same code.  Hence:

  - No crashes or weird bugs.
  - Libraries don't really need renaming.

But we'd need to patch a few packages that (stupidly) hardcode the libc soname
in the source. 

-- 
Robert Millan