On Wed, Feb 18, 2009 at 10:00:49AM +0100, Mladen Turk wrote: > Joe Orton wrote: >> So you really need a hack to the configure script which introduces a >> new way to break ABI compatibility with the standard build, just so you >> can avoid copying some symlinks in an obtuse distribution mechanism? I >> don't see it. > > First of all it's not a hack. > It's a perfectly legitimate way how you can build a shared library. > > Any other discussion would only lead to philosophical and > political rather then technical reasons. > It's off by default, and if you don't need it, don't use it.
If you don't have any technical justification for this other than "it lets me avoid copying a symlink" then I'm -1 on this change: 1) A non-versioned library build has a different ABI to the standard build, because the library SONAME changes. 2) Ballooning the number of possible APR ABIs is bad. 3) It is trivially simple to work around the problem of having to copy symlinks without adding complexity to the APR build system. We discuss changes on their technical merits. Saying "it's perfectly legitimate" doesn't add much to that debate. It would be "perfectly legitimate" to introduce a configure switch to make the library SONAME be "libfluffy-pink-clouds-1.so"; no laws would be broken that I'm aware of. Regards, Joe
