Re: Let's get rid of the separate minor version numbers for shlibs

Peter Eisentraut <peter(dot)eisentraut(at)2ndquadrant(dot)com> writes:
> On 8/15/16 5:11 PM, Stephen Frost wrote:
>> Eh? Last I checked, we needed minor version bumps to ensure that
>> binaries compiled against later versions, which might use newer symbols,
>> don't try to link against older libraries (which wouldn't have those
>> symbols).

> Let's review:

> What we install is

> libpq.so.5.8 (actual file)
> libpq.so.5 -> libpq.so.5.8
> libpq.so -> libpq.so.5.8

> The second one is the one used at run-time, looked up by SONAME.

Right, and that is all exactly per distro recommendations, at least
for Red Hat, and I'm pretty sure other distros too. This has not
been changed recently TTBOMK. See for example

http://tldp.org/HOWTO/Program-Library-HOWTO/shared-libraries.html

The only argument that particular document offers for including the
minor number is that it makes it easier to see which specific
version you have installed. That's not much, but it's not
nothing either. There might be other reasons I'm not remembering.

Also, SO_MINOR_VERSION is included in the shlib name for most
Unix-oid platforms, not just Linux. Even if we were to conclude
this was no longer recommended practice for Linux, I doubt we
should unilaterally drop the practice everywhere.

regards, tom lane