Re: Why versioned library names?

[Florian Weimer <fweimer at redhat dot com>]

* Florian Weimer:

> Why does the default “make install” command install the library files
> with versions in their names and relies on symbolic links to provide the
> official names?
>
> Is this so that a previous version of glibc can be restored by using
> sln?  If this is the only reason, is it worth keeping this feature?
>
> I'm asking about this because RPM has some peculiarities related to file
> removals and symbolic link updates during packages updates.  These
> changes can happen very late, and scriptlets can run while the old files
> and symbolic link targets are still present.

Any ideas?

If we can't think of a reason why this is needed, should we simplify the
installation procedure and avoid the symbolic links?

Thanks,
Florian