Hi Chris, while reading throuch debian-devel archives I read your "libraries being removed from the archive" mail.
There's at least one good reason why having several so-versions of a library in unstable is usually a bad idea: Inter-library dependencies open a _big_ range of sometimes hard to debug problems if a binary is linked with two so-versions of a library. An Example: Package: proga Depends: libt0, libd0 Package: libv0 Depands: libd0 If libd1 is uploaded and only one of proga and libv0 is recompiled with libd1 this results in proga linked with both so-versions of the library. I remember problems with two so-versions of libpng, later with libssl0.9.6 and libssl0.9.7, and with libvorbis (at the time of the big libvorbis breakage [1] I backported the recent libvorbis package to woody, which broke some KDE apps for people also using a KDE backport [2,3]). If you remove the old so-version when the new so-version enters unstable this forces all maintainers to recompile their packages and therefore this problem is currently only rarely observed. Unless you offer a good solution for this problem the main effect of your proposal will be many breakages in programs linked with two or more so-versions of a library at the same time. There are problems with so-name changes (I remember one library having 5 (five) different so-names within one month), but they should be solvable via communication between maintainers. cu Adrian BTW: Please Cc me on replies. [1] #156227, #156365, #161961, #178756; a fix was uploaded seven months after the first RC bug was reported [2] http://lists.debian.org/debian-kde/2003/debian-kde-200301/msg00430.html [3] I'm inclined say, either the kdelibs or the libvorbis maintainer shoult explain the exact cause of these crashes, but that would be a personal offense... -- "Is there not promise of rain?" Ling Tan asked suddenly out of the darkness. There had been need of rain for many days. "Only a promise," Lao Er said. Pearl S. Buck - Dragon Seed