[xmlsec] versioning and library naming policies

[John Belmonte]

Aleksey Sanin wrote:
> Well, I have to disagree with this. If you use development release, then you
> are doing on you own. Nobody promises nothing. IMHO, development release are 
> *not* intended to be packaged, incuded in distributions, whatsoever.

That's a fair opinion.

However, the point of development releases is to have people test out the new 
code, report problems, and suggest improvements.  I think we can agree about that.

The point of packaging is to make releases easier to install and manage.  The 
packager spends the time dealing with dependencies, conflicts, and fitting the 
install to the OS, etc., so that developers and users can focus on their real work.

So you see, development releases and packaging fit together, because a packaged 
development release will get more exposure to developers.  Furthermore, the 
process of packaging itself will often expose build problems that become useful 
information for the upstream author.

Maybe some people think that putting a package into the official Debian pool is 
some sacred thing, but it's not.  Putting a package in there doesn't mean that 
it will be burned onto CD and given to unwitting users.  Rather, it just means 
that a registered expert has done the work to make installation easy, and to 
follow Debian's guidelines.  The package is clearly marked as unstable, and any 
developer that downloads and uses the package knows the situation.

-John



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