Re: Copy packages to same PPA, different distro

[Michael Bienia <michael@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On 2008-05-28 00:29:57 +0200, Pau Garcia i Quiles wrote:
> 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.

I was perhaps a little bit unprecise. As the soversion is usually included
in the package name, increasing the soversion leads also to a new
package name:
libfoo.so.1 gets packaged as libfoo1. After an ABI change the soversion
gets incremented to 2. The library is now called libfoo.so.2 which is
now packaged as libfoo2.

Michael