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https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=479978
--- Comment #21 from Michael Schwendt mschwendt@gmail.com 2009-08-31 04:22:42 EDT --- Well, deciding on where to place the library file is not an issue.
Publishing a SONAME-less library, which other components will link with, is the issue. It leads to either silent ABI breakage during library upgrades (worse-case) or explicit dependencies on package name+version, which increase the package maintenance requirements.
One ought not invent SONAMEs, which bear a risk of conflicting with upstream's future SONAMEs, but one can choose versioned SONAMEs, which would change whenever the library version changes. e.g. libfoo-1.0.so.0, libfoo-1.1.so.0 and so on (alternatively, one maps the API/ABI to a build id, which may change more slowly than the library version). That way library upgrades require rebuilds of dependencies or else there would be broken RPM dependencies. The remaining problem is that these SONAMEs also differ from upstream and any other source of builds made for upstream's library. Still, such a work-around is better than shipping a library without a versioned SONAME.