Re: versioning documentation

[Ralf Wildenhues]

Hi Tim,

* Tim Ringenbach wrote on Fri, Apr 15, 2005 at 09:11:58PM CEST:
> 
> Would it be possible to improve the documentation at 
> http://www.gnu.org/software/libtool/manual.html#Versioning ? Many people 
> seem rather confused about library versioning.

We can try.  The more you help, the easier it will be for us.  :)

> Specificly, you don't explain the way Linux versions libraries, or the 
> way libtool's versioning translates to the SONAME, and what that means. 

Do you think we should explain each of the different versioning methods
libtool uses?  Or do you rather want to explain the Linux way only and
take it to show the differences between that and what can portably be
expected (please read below before answering)?

> Now some of this doesn't apply to some platforms, or is totally 
> different on some platforms. But even so, if people check the name of 
> the library produced and make sure that makes sense (which you don't 
> explain how to do, etc), they could catch an error in setting the 
> version with libtool, and fixing that error would fix the library even 
> on platforms that use some different kind of versioning.

OK, that sounds reasonable.

> So in short, I'm asking you to explain the major.minor.micro scheme, and 
> what an SONAME is and how its normally name.major, and how this relates 
> to libtool's concept of the library's version.

Two questions to dig further:  For one, the docs have been overhauled
for branch-2-0/HEAD [1].  Do they make more sense to you?  If not
enough, what's missing there?  Note we won't work much on branch-1-5
docs any more.

For another, do you think the suggestion in [2] would help if
incorporated properly into the docs?

Regards,
Ralf

[1] E.g. inside http://alpha.gnu.org/gnu/libtool/libtool-1.9f.tar.gz
[2] http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=260768