We have generally adopted a zero initial major version (SOVERSION in CMake terms) for PLplot libraries, and that major version persists for many of our smaller libraries because there have been no API changes for those libraries since their inception.
However, it has just come to my attention from a fink developer who very much disliked zero major version numbers and from reading http://www.finkproject.org/doc/porting/shared.php?phpLang=en that the major version number must be non-zero for Mac OS X libraries. Otherwise, it appears to be interpreted as "some kind of wildcard value". (Whatever that means.) Note, I don't have access to a Mac OS X platform to do any testing of what happens for a SOVERSION specified as zero, but I assume from the fink developer's response that CMake simply translates it to an invalid (according to the above URL) zero major version number for Mac OS X libraries which in turn causes some kind of linking issue for that platform. I don't really have any understanding of Mac OS X linking requirements so I would appreciate comments on this issue from those who do have such understanding. I realize this issue is mostly off-topic, but there are a lot of Mac OS X experts here who presumably know about this issue, and the issue is important for deciding what the minimum SOVERSION should be on cross-platform (Mac OS X) libraries that are built with CMake. For example, if this does turn out to be a serious issue for Mac OS X, should CMake give a warning if SOVERSION is ever less than 1? Alan __________________________ Alan W. Irwin Astronomical research affiliation with Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Victoria (astrowww.phys.uvic.ca). Programming affiliations with the FreeEOS equation-of-state implementation for stellar interiors (freeeos.sf.net); PLplot scientific plotting software package (plplot.org); the libLASi project (unifont.org/lasi); the Loads of Linux Links project (loll.sf.net); and the Linux Brochure Project (lbproject.sf.net). __________________________ Linux-powered Science __________________________ _______________________________________________ CMake mailing list [email protected] http://www.cmake.org/mailman/listinfo/cmake
