New Pixman Naming Scheme

[Colin Guthrie]

Soeren Sandmann wrote:
> Having a version number in the library name is just good practice
> IMO. It doesn't hurt anything and it substantially reduces the pain
> involved if an incompatible version has to be released.

Forgive me if I'm missing something but have major numbers not been part
of libraries for ages???

if I have
/usr/lib/libpixman.so.1.0

installed with cairo linked against it, there is nothing wrong with me
also having
/usr/lib/libpixman.so.2.0 installed and having Xserver link against that!!

This is no problem and is fairly standard in most distros. I know in
Mandriva we package the libraries individually (usually as subpackages
within a larger installable set of packages) with the libraries major
number in the actual package name. This means there is no barrier to
installing two versions of the same library without any conflict. We
cannot install the headers etc. for two different majors at the same
time if they share their file names (e.g. in /usr/include/pixman/) but
TBH I don't see a problem with this scenario in practical situations and
it just looks untidy (I can only think of a couple of libs that do this
- clutter being one example).

Perhaps I'm missing something but why is pixman so special that it
requires multiple devel headers installed at any one time?

Col