On Tue, Feb 27, 2007 at 03:10:08PM +0100, Dirk Mueller wrote: > On Monday, 26. February 2007, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > > > What happens if libfreetype.so.6 becomes libfreetype.so.7 and is really not > > used? In such a case it can indeed break dependent packages unnecessarily. > > > > Or am I missing something? > > Yes, if it is not really used, then there is no dependent package. if there > is > a dependent package, then it is really used, and will break.
Although I am not really sure what you mean with your sentence, here an example that might show what Andreas is talking about: Consider two libraries alpha.so.1 and beta.so.1 and an application gamma. Now, given that gamma actually uses beta.so.1 and beta.so.1 uses alpha.so.1. In that situation gamma also uses alpha.so.1 but not in an explicit way because it does not call any symbol from the interface of alpha.so.1. Now we change the interface of alpha and thus get alpha.so.2. Obviously we have to rebuild beta to use alpha.so.2 but the interface of beta does not change and we still have beta.so.1. In that situation we _don't_ have to replace gamma with a new version because it could sill operate perfectly with (the new) beta.so.1 (and thus alpha.so.2). I hope this made this topic a bit more clear. Robert -- Robert Schiele Dipl.-Wirtsch.informatiker mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] "Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum sonatur."
pgpqrAix36wnA.pgp
Description: PGP signature
