[geos-devel] 3.3.4 Released

[Sandro Santilli]

On Mon, Jun 04, 2012 at 04:06:20PM -0400, Greg Troxel wrote:
> Sandro Santilli <strk at keybit.net> writes:
>
> > C library clients are fine. C++ library clients are warned.
> 
> Do you mean the "using the C++ library is discouraged" in the docs?

Yes.

> That seems to be a hint that it's better to use the C API, not a warning
> that the shlib name is unstable.

The warning could indeed be extended to mention that.
Feel like filing a ticket ? Best if with a patch.

> Is there a technical reason why it's good to change the library name
> every release?  I can see fear about C++ APIs being unstable, but that
> means one needs to rebuild when the compiler changes, which is different
> From going from 3.3.3 to 3.3.4.

It's also ABI being unstable. The technical reason is it being too hard
to maintain a stable C++ ABI. See how much it takes for you to tell us
if there have been an ABI change between 3.3.3 and 3.3.4. I can't tell.

If there's an easy tool to do that I could reconsider, but it would still
mean maintaining another set of versions, reaching 3 (one for release, one
for C lib, one for C++ lib).

> Is this part of a plan to make it difficult to use the C++ library?  If
> so, I would say that it's not working, because it makes life difficult
> for packagers rather than making it difficult for people who release
> code that uses the C++ library (postgis and gdal both seem to do that,
> or at least they are linked that way on my system - perhaps that's a
> configure/packaging bug?).

That's a packaging bug. Both PostGIS and GDAL only use the C-API, so they
should not be packaged as being dependent on the C++ one. So all clients
should depend on libgeos_c, and _only_ libgeos_c should depend on
libgeos-XYZ.

--strk;

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