[ On Mon, January 18, 1999 at 10:57:17 (+0100), Thorsten Frueauf wrote: ]
> Subject: Re: tangled web for pkg update
>
> The major problem is to be sure that its a "minor" update that does not
> break anything. E.g. lesstif ppl warned that binaries compiled with
> lesstif-0.87.0 might break when just using the new lesstif-87.1 ones
> without recompiling cause they changed some inner structures.

That should be easily handled by simply keeping around the old shared
library, but unfortunately I don't think the NetBSD packages have
incremented the library version number when necessary....

In general any package which installs a shared library should be
specially handled.  Deleting such a package should not delete the shared
library, especially if '-f' is given, and probably never if there's a
dependent package also currently installed.  There still needs to be a
way to report stray libraries that are still installed so they can be
manually removed....

BTW, I think the ultimate goal should be to make it possible to
simultaneously install any number of versions of a library such as
lesstif and then make it possible to compile, link, and run applications
against any of those available versions of the library.  Such an option
would be primarily useful for developers (both systems and applications
developers), but it would also eliminate the above problem by default.
This is probably a task for libtool or something like it because it'll
require installing libraries and headers with their version numbers
somewhere in their pathnames, and adjusting the compiler options for
dependent packages.

-- 
							Greg A. Woods

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