[geos-devel] RFC6 - Discourage use of C++ API by requiring a configure switch to install the c++ headers and SDK

[Bas Couwenberg]

On 2017-10-05 11:52, Sandro Santilli wrote:
> On Thu, Oct 05, 2017 at 10:49:53AM +0100, Robert Coup wrote:
>> Hi Bas,
>> 
>> On 5 October 2017 at 07:02, Sebastiaan Couwenberg <sebastic at xs4all.nl>
>> wrote:
>> 
>> > On 10/05/2017 12:34 AM, Robert Coup wrote:
>> > > Alternative is to work with on C++ APIs/ABIs and compatibility with the
>> > > distros and make it clear that having 7 versions of GEOS installed is
>> > > completely normal. And woe betide if there's a security problem with the
>> > > WKB parser that affects them all. But that's a huge amount of effort to
>> > go
>> > > to for something the project has recommended against since forever...
>> >
>> > That may be fine for fink, but having more than one version of a library
>> > is not acceptable for Debian and neither is it for EPEL AFAIK. So the
>> > above is not going to happen in the most popular Linux distributions.
>> 
>> Trying to understand this a bit deeper - it's possible to have 2x 
>> GDALs
>> installed. eg. libgdal1h and libgdal20 will live side by side (though
>> python-gdal/gdal-bin clash), but you're saying a particular release
>> (xenial/jessie) will only ever have 1x GDAL package in it?
> 
> This is also an interesting question for PostGIS, where lack of
> multiple-versions of the same thing would prevent proper upgrades.
> 
> BTW, I have python2 and python3 installed at the same time, via
> packages, and I think qt4 and qt5 too...

Python interpreters and Qt frameworks are different. The changes between 
python2/3 & qt4/5 are major, it's not just a newer version. There still 
is only a single version of each.

In Debian unstable we have multiple Python 3 versions when we're 
transitioning to a new version after which the old one is removed.

Debian also only has a single PostgreSQL release in the distribution and 
all reverse dependencies are integrated with it, if you need another 
version you'll need to use the apt.postgresql.org repository.

Kind Regards,

Bas