From owner-freebsd-ports Tue Jan 2 18:11:16 2001 From owner-freebsd-ports@FreeBSD.ORG Tue Jan 2 18:11:14 2001 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-ports@freebsd.org Received: from timestone.com.au (hermes.timestone.com.au [203.36.26.98]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id D8DCE37B400 for ; Tue, 2 Jan 2001 18:11:11 -0800 (PST) Received: from [203.36.26.14] (HELO scorpio) by timestone.com.au (CommuniGate Pro SMTP 3.3.2) with SMTP id 740577 for freebsd-ports@freebsd.org; Wed, 03 Jan 2001 13:20:39 +1100 Message-ID: <002501c0752a$ef9b1c10$0e1a24cb@scorpio> From: "Richard Browne" To: Subject: Ports, shared libraries, dependencies and versions Date: Wed, 3 Jan 2001 13:14:43 +1100 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Priority: 3 X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook Express 5.50.4133.2400 X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V5.50.4133.2400 Sender: owner-freebsd-ports@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.org I've a couple of questions about the FreeBSD ports system. I'm new to Unix so please excuse any misunderstanding on my part. All help/comments will be appreciated: 1. From what I can make out, in general package dependencies are specified using full '-x.y.z' version numbers. For example, packages that depend on gtk require 'gtk-1.2.8'. This seems very inflexible to me. For example, suppose a new version of gtk comes out - 'gtk-1.2.9'. I can't upgrade easily because I have many (possible hundreds) of packages that depend on 'gtk-1.2.8'. The GNOME people's convention seems to be that their shared libraries are installed as 'libgtk-1.2.so'. This implies that all 1.2 releases, for example, will be binary compatible. Wouldn't it make sense then for FreeBSD ports to depend on 'gtk-1.2.*'? 2. If I compile the sources from GNOME, 'libgtk-1.2.so' is installed on my system. Installing the gtk port/package installs 'libgtk12.so'. The naming scheme has been changed for FreeBSD. I suppose it doesn't matter, but why go to the effort of changing the established GNOME/Unix convention? 3. Actually, the shared libraries installed seem to be 'libgtk-1.2.so.N' or 'libgtk12.so.N'. What does the N indicate? 4. Are there any docs/resources around that discuss shared libraries on Unix. In particular, what are the conventions for versioning etc. What does one do to handle different apps that require different versions of the same shared library? Thanks in advance for any comments. - Richard Browne To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-ports" in the body of the message