Re: gnustep-base library versioning

[Richard Frith-Macdonald]

On 3 Jan 2007, at 15:25, Larry Campbell wrote:

> gnustep-base specifies an INTERFACE_VERSION that includes its minor  
> version number. This means that I have to relink everything  
> whenever I deploy a new version of gnustep-base.

Only if the new version increments the minor version ... ie has api  
differences from the old version.

> This is really rather impractical, and I wonder whether we couldn't  
> change INSTALL_VERSION to include only the major version number  
> (and, of course, make no backwards-incompatible changes during  
> minor version upgrades).

We do that with the subminor version number.

> The current behavior, where every program needs to be relinked and  
> redeployed whenever gnustep-base is updated, is a significant  
> inhibitor to the adoption of gnustep where I work.

You only need to relink where a release changes the interface  
version ... that's relatively infrequent ... and you would presumably  
only move to a new release with a different interface version (rather  
than a bugfix release with the same interface version) if/when you  
want to use new features it offers.