Dependency hell

[Ziller, James]

So then is there a way that the ports/package system can automatically
handle replacing libfoo.so.3 with libfoo.so.4, so that packages compiled to
use libfoo.so.3 can use libfoo.so.4 instead (assuming the new version is
backward compatable)?  Or can the port link against say libfoo.so (which
should be a symlink to the version of the library that's installed)?

Thanks for the responses,
James

-----Original Message-----
From: Charles Swiger [mailto:cswiger at mac.com] 
Sent: Monday, April 19, 2004 1:18 PM
To: Ziller, James
Cc: 'freebsd-questions at freebsd.org'
Subject: Re: Dependency hell


On Apr 19, 2004, at 10:28 AM, Ziller, James wrote:
> So in other words I do have to recompile everything that depends on a
> given
> library just because that library is updated to a slightly newer 
> version?:(

Well, you could simply use the old version of the library.

It's not especially hard to write code in a way that maintains upwards 
compatibility-- putting a version # or sizeof(struct foo) in structures 
being passed around helps!-- but some projects don't bother.

-- 
-Chuck