Revisiting ideas

[Alexander E. Patrakov]

Dan Nicholson wrote:
> I agree that there are major advantages to splitting the libraries out
> of the package, but why can't you just update the whole openssl
> package to get the library update? In fact, the -devel split you're
> talking about where the bare .so links and the headers are in a
> separate package wouldn't affect a library update in any way. In most
> cases, the .so.* links are part of the main package anyway (including
> openssl).

Think about the way dependencies are expressed. The automatic dependnecy 
extractor says: "package cryptofoo [that was built before openssl upgrade] 
depends on libssl.so.0.9.8 due to library dependencies". If you attempt to 
upgrade the whole openssl library to 0.9.9 (i.e. a binary incompatible 
release--that's important) without the split, the package manager will not be 
able to do this, because the new package does not provide libssl.so.0.9.8 and 
thus the cryptofoo package's dependencies are not satisfied with the new openssl 
package. I.e., with such incompatible upgrades, it is convenient to have the 
following installed during the transitions: old openssl dynamic libraries 
without the .so symlinks, new openssl dynamic libraries with the .so symlinks, 
new headers. You can't have all three at the same time without splitting the 
package (assuming that the package manager knows about file conflicts).

-- 
Alexander E. Patrakov