[gdal-dev] libtool numbering policy

[Even Rouault]

Hi,

A ticket ( https://trac.osgeo.org/gdal/ticket/6542 ) has been raised about 
libtool SONAME having not changed between GDAL 2.0.X and GDAL 2.1.0 due to 
incrementing both LIBGDAL_CURRENT and LIBGDAL_AGE .
This was raised also in https://trac.osgeo.org/gdal/ticket/4543

Our, more or less implicit, policy up to now was to take just into account the 
C ABI, and not the C++ one. Any opinion if we should change it to take into 
account the C++ ABI as well ?

If doing that, I can see
- pros: new policy would match the expectations of the C++ API users
- cons: C API users would see soname changes that don't affect them, requiring 
recompilation/relinking

Another approach would be to have a libgdal_c.so with C ABI only and 
libgdal.so with the rest, ala GEOS, but it is not obvious that the cost to 
restructure the GDAL code to implement that, and to existing external code to 
adapt for this change, would be worth the advantages.

Even

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