Fwd: Compat Libraries (was Re: libcurl.so.2) [mpeters at mac.com]

[Michael Schwendt]

On Wed, 08 Dec 2004 01:02:53 +0000, Michael A. Peters wrote:

> Maybe "Fedora Extras" is the right place for these packages, but I
> don't know, packages in "Extras" should link against current shared
> libraries, and extras maintaining compat-* packages may result in some
> maintainers using those instead of rebuilding/patching when needed.

Maintainers can't used them for that. Because a compat-* package
should not contain the headers files and libraries which are needed at
build/link-time and not put these in a compat-*-devel package
either. With compiler and standard library being an exception. Hence
the current platform cannot be used to develop full-blown applications
for the old platform and compile with and link with old libraries. But
applications built on the old platform can be installed and run on the
current platform, since the libraries needed at run-time are available
in compat-* packages.

There are other compat-* style packages in Extras already, when
multiple versions/APIs of a library are needed at once by different
applications in a repository. Those packages usually either apply the
"foo$APIVERSION" or "foo$LIBMAJORVERSION" naming scheme, as in "foo2",
"foo3", and so on. These are complete packages which come with their
%name-devel counterparts.