MPFR in MacPorts

[Jack Howarth]

On Thu, Jun 10, 2010 at 11:50:46AM -0700, Toby Peterson wrote:
> On Jun 10, 2010, at 11:26 AM, Jack Howarth wrote:
> 
> > On Thu, Jun 10, 2010 at 06:23:08PM +0200, Vincent Lefevre wrote:
> >> On 2010-06-10 11:50:49 -0400, Jack Howarth wrote:
> >>> Exactly the point. MacPorts sorely needs the same sort of split-off
> >>> feature as fink where a libmpfr2-shlibs/libmpfr3-shlibs split-off
> >>> package could contain the required runtime shared libraries which
> >>> can co-exist but the main libmpfr2/libmpfr3 packages with the
> >>> development headers and shared lib symlinks would conflict. The
> >>> absence of such a capability in MacPorts is a major limitation
> >>> to proper package migrations. One simply can't expect to force
> >>> all packages in mass to migrate to new soversions of a support
> >>> library, Some backward compatibility support has to be retained
> >>> through co-existing shlibs split-off packages.
> >> 
> >> Note however that in the case of MPFR, ABI breakage is rare. IIRC,
> >> ABI compatibility had been preserved since November 2004.
> > 
> > Yes, but that is tangential to the fact that any soversion bump for
> > a support library in MacPorts currently forces a mass migration to
> > the new version since there is no support for co-existing shlibs
> > split-off packages with conflicting main development packages.
> > Hoping for ABI stability isn't a solution.
> 
> Of course we support that (sort of, since we don't have "packages" in MacPorts). I'm not sure what your complaint is - Vincent's initial email simply stated that MPFR is not going to be updated immediately.
> 
> If there is a pressing need for both versions to be available, we can certainly do the work required.

My complaint is general in that the absence of co-existing shlibs packages
in MacPorts is a major design deficiency.

> 
> - Toby