[ On Tuesday, January 18, 2005 at 10:44:47 (+0000), Chris Wareham wrote: ]
> Subject: Re: safe make replace?
>
> It's safe to do a "make replace" on a library when the new version is
> binary compatible with the old one. For packages that use libtool and /
> or library versioning properly it's generally safe to do a make replace
> when only the patchlevel changes (for example, GTK+ going from 2.6.0 to
> 2.6.1). For some libraries, changes in the minor version number are also
> OK (again using GTK+ as an example, the jump from 2.4.x to 2.6.0 was
> binary compatible).

If you're _very_ lucky.

Most developers these days still don't seem to have any clue what it
means to have a truly backwards compatible "Application _Binary_
Interface", though I don't blame them much because it's a rather
difficult and complex problem, and one that is not really facilitated by
most high-level language development tools commonly used by application
developers, including, especially, libtool.

Just because the API did not change doesn't mean the ABI did not change!  :-)

-- 
						Greg A. Woods

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