Re: obsoleting shlibs - what's the plan

["Steven M. Bellovin" <smb%cs.columbia.edu@localhost>]

On Wed, 26 Mar 2008 19:09:50 -0400
Greg Troxel <gdt%ir.bbn.com@localhost> wrote:

>   >  >I don't understand.  Which kind of problem arises?
> 
>   >  When you use the new kerberos, then it is possible that the
>   >  old libraries won't interoperate because of missing features.
> 
>   >Is this any worse than using some other older computer that hasn't
>   >been upgraded?  Breaking everyone's compiled binaries seems
>   >unreasonable,
> 
>   The old libraries will only be linked by programs that do not use
> them. I fail to see how that is useful.
> 
> What is useful is that programs that were compiled under older
> versions of the system on the same machine will continue to work,
> instead of the user being hosed and having to have a flag day rebuild
> of all sorts of programst that they might not even know depend on
> krb5.  For example, I could no longer print.  Fortunately I was able
> to figure it out nearly instantly because I understand this stuff.
> 
> Why is it so important to nuke the old libraries, breaking programs
> compiled against them?
> 
I agree with you.

But here's an idea for a pkgsrc tool: something that would look
in /bin/*, /sbin/*, /usr/*/*bin/*, /home/*/bin/*, etc., and identify
all unneeded shared libraries.  A library is unneeded if (a) there's a
later version of it, and (b) nothing in any tested directory uses the
older version.


                --Steve Bellovin, http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~smb