Package: binutils Version: 2.14.90.0.7-8 Severity: important Ulrich Drepper's paper `How to Write Shared Libraries' (http://people.redhat.com/drepper/dsohowto.pdf) includes the following recommendation in section 3.8, `Using Versioned DSOs': It is therefore highly recommended to never depend on undefined symbols. The linker can help to ensure this if -Wl,-z,defs is added to compiler command line. If it is really necessary to use undefined symbols the newly built DSO should be examined to make sure that all references to symbols in versioned DSOs are appropriately marked.
This recommendation has been followed for several libraries, but has turned out to be problematic in several cases. pango1.0: Introduced in 1.4.0-3 (Sat, 22 May 2004) and retracted on all architectures in 1.4.0-4 (Sat, 5 Jun 2004) following reports of breakage on ia64 (http://bugs.debian.org/252401) and alpha (http://bugs.debian.org/253038). libgnome: Introduced in 2.6.1-2 (Sun, 25 Apr 2004) and retracted for alpha and ia64 in 2.6.1-4 (Wed, 9 Jun 2004) following http://bugs.debian.org/253375 . It has now been reported to affect hppa as well: http://bugs.debian.org/256361 . libgsf: The recommendation has been followed since 1.8.2-4 (dated Sat, 25 Oct 2003). I have received no reports so far that pointed to it causing problems. The issue has been discussed on the lists as well, in particular in the thread starting with http://lists.debian.org/debian-ia64/2004/06/msg00020.html . IMHO it should be researched further as it may point to either an issue with the linker, or with the way at least two libraries important for desktop use have been coded. -- System Information: Debian Release: testing/unstable APT prefers unstable APT policy: (800, 'unstable'), (750, 'experimental'), (500, 'testing') Architecture: i386 (i686) Kernel: Linux 2.4.27-rc2 Locale: LANG=C, LC_CTYPE=en_US.ISO8859-1 Versions of packages binutils depends on: ii libc6 2.3.2.ds1-13 GNU C Library: Shared libraries an -- debconf information excluded -- Obsig: developing a new sig
