[TRE-general] libtre ABI not completely stable?

[Ville Laurikari]

On Sun, Nov 05, 2006 at 10:59:09PM +0100, Dominik 'Rathann' Mierzejewski wrote:
> Hello.
> Somebody is claiming that libtre ABI is not stable, hence a shared version
> cannot be used reliably. Is it true? Or can I reassure that person that
> his fears are unfounded?

The ABI can be considered stable.  Currently we're at ABI major
version number 4.  There are currently no plans to make backwards
incompatible changes.

Furthermore, the ABI is versioned on systems which support shared
library versioning, such as most UNIX -like operating systems.  This
means that _if_ backwards incompatible changes are made, the ABI
version number will be bumped up to 5 so that applications linked
against version 4 won't try to link against the new version.

The Debian packages for the TRE library, for example, are already
prepared for a possible new ABI version.  The package name is
`libtre4' and it contains `libtre.so.4'.  If a version with ABI 5 is
ever made, Debian will have a `libtre5' package and you can install
both if you need both.

--
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