[GRASS5] status of libgrass, mapserver, gdal and >8bit rasters

[Glynn Clements]

Markus Neteler wrote:

> > > I also think that we should release the GRASS libraries as stand-alone
> > > package in future (probably with GRASS++ libs, let's jump into the license
> > > discussion again...) to add more flexibility in GRASS packaging.
> > 
> > If you are considering releasing shared libraries as a standalone
> > package, we will have to start paying attention to version issues. 
> > 
> > Specifically, each library will require a version number in its
> > soname, and that version number will need to increase whenever an
> > incompatible change is made to the library.
> 
> Yes. Shouldn't the version number in the soname be added in
> any case?

Ideally, shared libraries should be versioned. But there's no point
having a version number unless it actually means something. Adding a
version number which doesn't mean anything is worse than not having a
version number, as it may create a false sense of security.

Simply changing the soname of e.g. libgrass_gis from libgrass_gis.so
to libgrass_gis.so.0 would be trivial. The slightly more awkward part
is adding a version number to each library Gmakefile and changing
SLIBRULE to make use of it. The substantially more awkward part is
making sure that developers remember to increment the version number
whenever they make an incompatible change (and, preferably, not to
make incompatible changes too often).

-- 
Glynn Clements <glynn.clements at virgin.net>