On Wed, Feb 21, 2007 at 21:21:11 -0500, David Nusinow wrote: > If it's built against server 1.2, which it will be in this case, then it's > providing ABI 1.1. I think we need to have another xsfbs improvement that > automatically generates the correct Provides: here too. If we're going to > automate this, it should go all the way. > The ABI provided by xserver 1.2 and 1.3 is compatible with the one provided by xserver 1.1. This means that drivers built for xserver 1.1 will still work with 1.2, so we want them to keep being installable. The xserver-xorg-video-* virtual package is similar to a library SONAME, which means that you *don't* bump it when the ABI changes compatibly. Maybe xserver-xorg-video-1.0 should have been xserver-xorg-video-1, to make it clear that only the major ABI number was significant there. When the ABI changes incompatibly, we'll also need to add conflicts on earlier driver versions in the server, and this is something we shouldn't do when it's not needed.
On the other hand, since the ABI has changed between xserver 1.1 and 1.2, we want drivers built with 1.2 to require a newer version of the server at run time, in the same way that programs built against a shared library use the shlibs file of this library to get the correct (possibly versioned) dependency. This is taken care of by having the drivers depend on a recent enough version of the server, not by changing their Provides. If you want the "Provides" field for drivers to be automatically generated, you'll also have to provide mechanisms for both the input and video driver, which the latest upload doesn't. But in both cases, only the major number is significant. Hoping to have somewhat reduced the confusion, Julien
signature.asc
Description: Digital signature