How image installs work [was Re: The image question]

[Vincent Lefevre]

On 2007-03-10 11:11:53 -0500, Daniel J. Luke wrote:
> On Mar 10, 2007, at 8:42 AM, Yves de Champlain wrote:
> >Agree on that, who wants to do a clean reinstall of /opt/local because 
> >libiconv was upgraded ?

> because someone forced you to upgrade libiconv?

There may be security holes or important bugs fixed. In doubt, it is
strongly advised to upgrade packages. Now, this is more a problem with
the current MacPorts system. For instance, in Debian, incompatible
versions have different names and can evolve in parallel.

> >Maybe the last check is useful as a hint for the maintainer at best, but 
> >there are many things that could be checked and handled directly.  
> >Portfiles could include a flag for backward incompatibilities.

> ... which assumes that the port maintainers are going to know
> whenever an API/ABI change occurs in their port (which I doubt is
> true for all ports - and I don't know of an automated way we can
> improve the macports infrastructure to really help here).

Just compile and look at the soname.

-- 
Vincent Lefèvre <vincent at vinc17.org> - Web: <http://www.vinc17.org/>
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Work: CR INRIA - computer arithmetic / Arenaire project (LIP, ENS-Lyon)