Subject: Re: libXinerama and libxkb{file,ui}, et al, lossage
To: Aymeric Vincent <Aymeric.Vincent@labri.fr>
From: Frank van der Linden <fvdl@netbsd.org>
List: tech-x11
Date: 10/07/2003 21:47:33
On Mon, Oct 06, 2003 at 02:43:23PM +0200, Aymeric Vincent wrote:
> If I understand correctly, the point of using (PIC) static libraries
> instead of shared libraries is that you can replace the API of the
> library at any point in time without bothering about keeping binary
> compatibility for software compiled with a former version of the API.
> 
> And for whatever reason, XF86 people want to keep the freedom of
> changing their API for a few libraries. I think we should cooperate
> with them in this respect instead of following the wrong move of
> several Linux vendors.

Using PIC .a files is ugly.. I'm not sure if I see the versioning issue,
since several other libraries have had their major numbers bumped
over time.

Are these pic_a libaries linked into others as dependencies? What are the
chances of the interface changing? If the answers to this are "yes" and
"high", then I'd rather not make these shared libraries, as it means
that we would have to go through some pain bumping a lot of library
versions if an interface changes.But otherwise having them shared is cleaner.

- Frank

-- 
Frank van der Linden                                            fvdl@netbsd.org
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