Quoting Michael Bienia <michael@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>:
On 2008-05-26 21:59:02 +0200, Pau Garcia i Quiles wrote:Not necessarily. If I build for Gutsy but the library breaks ABI compatibility in Hardy, the Gutsy binary won't work in Hardy (and of course the Hardy binary won't work on Gutsy, either).If the ABI of a library changes then it must get a new package name to make sure that upgrades work. Without the renaming you would get the problem you describe. If you try to install in such case the deb from Gutsy on Hardy, it will fail due to unmet/broken dependencies.
You are only partially right. If the ABI changes you should increase the soversion, not rename the package. Changing the package name should only be done if upstream or the Debian package is so broken that increasing the soversion is impossible.
http://www.netfort.gr.jp/~dancer/column/libpkg-guide/libpkg-guide.html#upstreamconcerns -- Pau Garcia i Quiles http://www.elpauer.org (Due to my workload, I may need 10 days to answer)
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