On Fri, 15 Jul 2005 01:09:01 -0700, Michael A. Peters wrote:
I know that with shared libraries, it generally is not a good idea
to
push an update that involves versioning a shared library because the
user may have software their system that is linked against the older
shared library, but is there a general policy about other software?
With "versioning a shared library" here you mean a change in SONAME?
One of the packages I maintain in Extras is likely to be named as a
sourceforge project of the month. The upstream developer is working
overtime to finish implementing some things before that happens. The
package is gourmet (PyGTK recipe manager) and absolutely nothing depends
upon it - and I'm thinking that when he has these things finished, that
might be a good time to update the package in Extras.
Since it is not a package which is designed to have anything else depend
on it, I'm assuming there is not a problem with a version update in
Extras? Is that the case?
If your package is the only one which accesses the shared libs, no
problem. This is most certainly the case when the package doesn't provide
a public API and if no other package implements an API either. Hence:
no dependencies in Extras => don't worry about upgrades.