[vtk-developers] VTK Versions

Maitland Bottoms bottoms at debian.org
Thu Oct 10 18:10:28 EDT 2002


Ken Martin writes:
 > I'm thinking of adding version numbers to VTK libraries and executables.

Yes.

One of the things I have long hoped to gain competency in is the use
of shared library versioning. From my current basic understanding
level (the Debian VTK packages relink and add a soname) the mechanics
are not too hard. With VTK's testing infrastructure, shared library
version information will likely have more meaning and validity than
library versions of other projects. (The thing to avoid is library abi
changes without soname changes.)

It has been my hope that the setting of sonames would be handled by
CMake, that CMake would follow the path of automake and libtool in the
ability to build shared and static libraries. Then VTK could inherit
these benefits with ease.

One of the things this buys the user is the ability to continue to run
an old binary while developing against the new libraries, since the
versioned shared libraries can be installed simultaneously and the
linker picks up the right one at runtime.

The VTK project should be setting library version numbers, then
packagers, with additional compliance with the FHS, will allow binary
application portability across all Linux flavors.

Some Debian oriented library engineering info is at
http://www.netfort.gr.jp/~dancer/column/libpkg-guide/libpkg-guide.html

-Maitland



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