[xmlsec] versioning and library naming policies

John Belmonte jvb@prairienet.org
Thu, 27 Mar 2003 10:52:10 -0500


Hi Aleksey,

You haven't stated any policies, but it seems your intention is to sometimes be 
developing more than one version at a time (e.g. 0.0.x and 0.1.x series).  Will 
even versions be stable and odd be development, like the Linux kernel, or is 
this only coincidence?

In any case, I think some changes to the naming of library files may be 
necessary.  One reason is to allow a separate SONAME sequence for each series. 
Here is what I propose for both the file name and SONAME of shared libraries:

     libxmlsec-<SERIES_VERSION>.so.<SEQUENCE_NUMBER>

For example:

     libxmlsec-0.0.so.0
     libxmlsec-0.1.so.0

and static libraries would be:

     libxmlsec-0.0.a
     libxmlsec-0.1.a

This also helps the packagers who have to maintain multiple series.  We can name 
our packages in a similar way (xmlsec-0.0, etc.).

A few examples of other libraries using this convention are libtk/tcl and libgimp.

I'm not an expert about these things, but that is my take.  If two series are 
going to be significant at the same time then:

    * developers need a way to work with both series on the same machine, so 
static library file names must include the series version number

    * to avoid confusion, SONAME sequences should progress naturally, and not be 
affected by some other version, so dynamic library file names and SONAMES also 
must include the series version number.

Regards,
-John



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