On 9 Nov 1999, Falk Hueffner wrote: > [snip] > > > Hence, a program compiled with the Version 1 header will crash > > > if linked against the version 2 library. > [snip] > > > This makes distributing > > > binary programs very hard if the library is a '.so' because it's > > > very likely that the program will become linked to a library > > > that doesn't match the header it was compiled with. > > This cannot happen when using Debian packages, since they (should) > include appropriate Conflicts.
I'm sorry that I didn't reply to this sooner, since I cannot quote all of the original message. I think that things are a little bit backwards; you *need* to distribute the .so libraries in the regular plib package, and the .a libraries in the -dev package. .a libraries are useless unless you're compiling (static) binaries. Falk Hueffner is correct in the assessment of .so libraries - for any Debian package compiled with plib, there will be a dependency on the correct version of the the plib package (containing the necessary .so files of the correct version). So, in summary: The plib-dev package should contain headers and .a libraries. The plib package should contain the shared libraries. Disclaimer: I'm not a maintainer of library packages, so those who know better, please feel free to jump in and set things straight. AFAIK, however, this is how it should work. [EMAIL PROTECTED] | If we all work together, http://www.debian.org | we can totally disrupt the system. (fortune)