matthew> probably would have saved some hassle for this, yeah.  but there are still
       matthew> about 4 architectures (at least) to convert to ELF.  besides this transition
       matthew> period, there is *every* reason to keep the shared library version numbers
       matthew> the same across all ports.
   
     Okay, how about minor versions? Some of them, libm for instance and bfd are 
   identical. I do *NOT* want /emul/aout if I can avoid it.

i don't understand what you are saying here.
   
       matthew> [*] note that moving to ELF brings some new features but this is
       matthew> orthogonal as they are basically implementation issues.
   
     But the files are incompatible. The argument for leaving the major numbers
   the same was because of 3rd party libraries. But if you change format, then
   you have to rebuild.

the argument for not changing was that the were no *interface* changes
in the library.  the shared library version is 100% independant of the
format and 100% dependant on the interfaces present.

     So, is the reason for the renames to have remained in the elf versions is
   that we wouldn't want to maintain two sets of includes?

the renames remained because the featureset was not changed.


i agree that in an simple (eg, freebsd single architecture) world revving
every major library version would avoid the problem.  but that's not what
we have....