Your message dated Wed, 09 Feb 2011 20:23:31 +0100
with message-id <[email protected]>
and subject line Re: Bug#603583: There should be a symlink openbabel.pc -->
openbabel-2.0.pc
has caused the Debian Bug report #603583,
regarding There should be a symlink openbabel.pc --> openbabel-2.0.pc
to be marked as done.
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If this is not the case it is now your responsibility to reopen the
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603583: http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=603583
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Package: openbabel-dev
Version: 2.2.3-1+b1
According to CLI policy (see [1]) there should be a .pc file without
version, pointing to latest pkgconfig description file, in particular:
/usr/lib/pkgconfig/openbabel-2.0.pc --> openbabel.pc
> [1]
> http://pkg-mono.alioth.debian.org/cli-policy/ch-packaging.html#s-pkg-config-file
--
With best regards,
Dmitry
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--- Begin Message ---
Am Mittwoch, den 09.02.2011, 19:17 +0100 schrieb Dmitry Katsubo:
> On 07.02.2011 15:20, Daniel Leidert wrote:
> > Hi,
> >
> > Unfortunately such requests are not useful for Debian. These files must
> > be introduced by upstream, otherwise people cannot rely on the existence
> > of these files. Further you cite a packaging policy for Mono related
> > packages, which is not related to openbabel.
> >
> > What is the rationale behind your request?
>
> Indeed the spec I refer is not for normal libraries, but I suppose the
> best practices are applicable.
These might be "best practices" to your opinion. But again: maybe this
works for Mono related packages. But it won't work here and AFAIK (you
cite this example) it also doesn't work for libxml2.
> The rationale behind having a symlink is
> to avoid sticking to a OpenBabel version when requesting for pkgconfig
> info (not querying for "openbabel-2.0" but for "openbabel").
This would lead to build failures for packages/software depending on
openbabel 1.x. The API between these major versions of openbabel does
differ and there is no backwards compatibility. Therefor introducing
this change is intrusive (we don't have packages in the archive
depending on openbabel 1.x, but some Debian users might have software
copies using this library version).
> There are different approaches in different packages. For example,
> libpng12-dev
> provides a link (libpng.pc -> libpng12.pc) while libxml2-dev does not
> (libxml-2.0.pc).
IMO the situation is the same for libxml2. Maybe it isn't for libpng ...
I don't know it. But I guess, that even for libpng the symlink has not
been introduced on Debian only.
> Most of the libraries provide the *.pc file without version.
So did openbabel 1.x.
> But what version ("2.0") really means for OpenBabel? API version or
> library version?
It was introduced with openbabel series 2.0.
> As there is no policy for that, the bug might be considered closed,
> although your opinion is very welcomed.
I am going to close this. IMO such a symlink doesn't have any advantage
and will cause breakages. Just consider the following example: openbabel
3 might again break API in a backwards incompatible way. Then changing
the symlink to openbabel-3.0 would break several software packages too
depending on openbabel 2.x. You would never be able to rely on
openbabel.pc.
Regards, Daniel
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