RFC: Soname in rpm name

[Jeff Spaleta]

On Thu, 27 Jan 2005 12:49:12 -0500, Toshio <toshio at tiki-lounge.com> wrote:
> I'm also still waiting to see why the current de facto scheme of:
>   current = libname
>   previous  = libname[Version]
> 
> is _compellingly_ wrong...  Perhaps there just needs to be a summary of
> Pros and Cons so we can see the tradeoffs.

If i understand the argument that people are making... is that doing
it this way... is a burden on 3rd party packagers who have to try to
predict when and if Core is going to introduce a libname[Version] for
previous versions.

And by association also a burden on users who are trying to use
applications from outside of current Core that still need the older
libs for applications until a 3rd party is able to rebuild a package
with the older libs or the application developers retool to support
the new library.

My counter argument is that doing it this way historically has
provided a mechanism by which Core(and rhl before it) explicitly and
delibrately chooses to expire older libraries that Core is no longer
maintaining and is no longer needed by anything inside Core.

Another argument which has been made for continuing in this fashion is
that  standardizing on using sonames in all library packages
potentially lowers the bar to backward-compatibility cruft. Such
libraries would linger in an unknown maintainership state and be
difficult to drop at any point because there will always be users who
are using legacy application that needs that legacy library.

-jef