[Fedora-packaging] Re: Automatic detection of Requires and versions

[Axel Thimm]

On Wed, Jan 09, 2008 at 11:58:23AM -0500, Bill Nottingham wrote:
> Patrice Dumas (pertusus at free.fr) said: 
> > If something is added between 2.8 and 2.10 while ABI is kept compatible 
> > and the soname isn't changed, and that new thing is needed, then the 
> > soname is not enough.
> 
> Only in the case when you're running something built against, say
> Fedora 8, on Fedora < 8. (Or Fedora 8 from some number of months
> ago, I suppose, if people are gratuitously upgrading libraries.)

As said this has happened with real life use cases: Users did install
some bare Fedora Core X w/o updates, then considered it proper to
first upgrade synaptic which required updated (but still within the
same Fedora Core release) gtk/glib etc. libs and then wouldn't start
on the non-updated Fedora Core system.

If this depsolver & GUI is your preferred method of updating then you
are suddenly in a chicken/egg situation - you need to depsolver to
update the system and the depsolver needs the system to be updated to
even start.

So for some cases like for deplsovers and their GUIs maybe adding
strict automatic dependencies (e.g. like Requires: foo >= %(rpm -q
foo)) is a safe keeper to not run into similar situations again.

Or rephrased: ABI backward-compatibility (which constant sonames
imply) is not enough if the matter of upgrade ordering matters.
-- 
Axel.Thimm at ATrpms.net
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