Subject: Links for Libraries

From: [email-masked] (David Frey)
Date: Sun, 2 Jun 1996 18:52:17 +0200 (MET DST)

A question about the symbolic links for the libraries:

I learnt some time ago from the libc/ld.so release notes that it's 
necessary to have links from libfoo.so to libfoo.so.x.y (besides the
usual libfoo.so.x -> libfoo.so.x.y links). They had to be created manually
for ELF systems.

Is this still true? If no, I had to re-upload some packages...

David
-- 
David Frey <[email-masked]>|Microsoft isn't the answer...it's the QUESTION.
Schlieren, Switzerland        |``No'' is the answer.
PGP-Key available on request  |Use Debian GNU/Linux!

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From: Michael Meskes <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 3 Jun 1996 12:15:28 +0200 (MET DST)

>From what I know it's still true. And it will remain true.

Michael

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From: Ian Jackson <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 4 Jun 96 03:28 BST

> Is this still true? If no, I had to re-upload some packages...

Yes, it is still true that these links are required.  Packages should
create them.

The best way is for the package to create the link libfoo.so to
libfoo.so.x rather than to libfoo.so.x.y - this will involve less
mucking about when then library version changes.

Ian.

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From: [email-masked] (David Engel)
Date: Tue, 4 Jun 1996 09:43:43 -0500 (CDT)

Stephen Early writes:
> On Tue, 4 Jun 1996, Ian Jackson wrote:
> I did this for a version of the xlib/xdevel packages, but was told not to
> by David Engel. He suggests making the .so -> .so.x.y link be part of the
> devel package. I didn't argue. 

Stephen is right.  The .so symlink should point to .so.x.y.  This is
because the .so symlink, which is provided in the -dev packages, is
used for linking by ld and must point to the specific library which
matches the header files in the -dev package.  If the .so symlink
points to the .so.x symlink, as Ian suggests, the .so symlink and
header files can get out of sync if the user installs a newer library,
obtained from somewhere else, and runs ldconfig.

David
-- 
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[email-masked]                      1101 E. Arapaho Road
(214) 234-6400                     Richardson, TX  75081

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From: Mike Coleman <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 4 Jun 96 04:35 CDT

Date: Tue, 4 Jun 96 03:28 BST
   From: Ian Jackson <[email-masked]>

If you add one of these .so. libraries, you need to run 'ldconfig' afterwards,
don't you?  Doesn't ldconfig add these symlinks for you?

--Mike

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From: Stephen Early <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 4 Jun 1996 10:53:49 +0100 (BST)

Steve Early
[email-masked]

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From: Yves Arrouye <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 4 Jun 1996 18:36:42 +0200

>    mucking about when then library version changes.

Maybe it would be nice to have such a choice be consitent across all
packages, which is not the case actually...

Yves.

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From: Ian Jackson <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 6 Jun 96 01:48 BST

David Engel writes ("Re: Links for Libraries"):
...
> obtained from somewhere else, and runs ldconfig.

Right.  I'll try to make sure that the new policy manual explains
this.

Ian.