Shared libraries help distributors, even if the interface is constantly changing. Currently with static libraries, we have to keep rebuilding shotwell manually when we update libraw.
If you generated a shared library, we would make a binary package for this, e.g. libraw13 containing /usr/lib/libraw.so.13.0.0. Shotwell would be linked against this. If you release a new libraw with API changes, then we would make a new binary package libraw14 containing /usr/lib/libraw.so.14.0.0.
This is much the same as the statically linked case, but the advantages are:
- We can easily detect that shotwell is using the old libraw version as we would no longer be able to build libraw13. So we can automatically mark shotwell as needing a recompile.
- If you make a point release and don't change the major version number then no recompilation is required
- If we patch libraw then no recompilation of shotwell is required.
From a distributors point of view we don't mind how often you change the library version number (so if you don't want to make ABI guarantees then just keep increasing the version). libraw.so.999.0.0 is fine with us.
Shared libraries help distributors, even if the interface is constantly changing. Currently with static libraries, we have to keep rebuilding shotwell manually when we update libraw.
If you generated a shared library, we would make a binary package for this, e.g. libraw13 containing /usr/lib/libraw.so.13.0.0. Shotwell would be linked against this. If you release a new libraw with API changes, then we would make a new binary package libraw14 containing /usr/lib/libraw.so.14.0.0.
This is much the same as the statically linked case, but the advantages are:
- We can easily detect that shotwell is using the old libraw version as we would no longer be able to build libraw13. So we can automatically mark shotwell as needing a recompile.
- If you make a point release and don't change the major version number then no recompilation is required
- If we patch libraw then no recompilation of shotwell is required.
From a distributors point of view we don't mind how often you change the library version number (so if you don't want to make ABI guarantees then just keep increasing the version). libraw.so.999.0.0 is fine with us.