[Insight-developers] Re: shared library versioning

[Brad King]

Gaetan Lehmann wrote:
> On Mon, 24 Apr 2006 04:30:44 +0200, Steve M. Robbins  
> <steven.robbins at videotron.ca> wrote:
>>
>> I wrote some time ago asking whether ITK could version its
>> shared libraries.
>>
>> On Sun, Mar 05, 2006 at 01:47:34AM -0500, steve wrote:
>>
>>> Debian's policy mandates that shared libraries be properly versioned
>>> with a shared object name (SONAME), which the ITK release currently
>>> does not have.  The SONAME encodes a version number that is a
>>> statement of binary compatibility.  From Debian's point of view,
>>> therefore, it is much preferable if the ITK development team took care
>>> of the SONAME.
>>
>> Since no-one argued to the contrary, I append a patch to the HEAD
>> of ITK's cvs tree that sets VERSION and SOVERSION properties for
>> each library.
> 
> first I forgot to agree with that change, as an rpm packager, when you  
> post it some time ago, so I do it now :-)

For those interested, there is now a version of Steve's patch here:

   http://www.itk.org/Bug/bug.php?op=show&bugid=3249

This adds the ITK version number to the "soname" of the ITK libraries on 
UNIX platforms.  It helps make sure that when a program linked against 
an ITK shared library is executed that the dynamic loader finds the 
matching version.  There are symbolic links with the original library 
names so nothing changes for users.

I implemented this for VTK last summer and it has been working well.  I 
plan to test Steve's patch and commit to ITK.

Comments?
-Brad