Gentoo Archives: gentoo-dev

From: Ulrich Mueller <ulm@g.o>
To: gentoo-dev@l.g.o
Subject: Re: [gentoo-dev] libpcre.so.3 - Compatibility with Debian
Date: Thu, 11 Aug 2016 09:44:04
Message-Id: 22444.18637.297626.134016@a1i15.kph.uni-mainz.de
In Reply to: [gentoo-dev] libpcre.so.3 - Compatibility with Debian by James Le Cuirot
1 >>>>> On Thu, 11 Aug 2016, James Le Cuirot wrote:
2
3 > We, like almost everyone else and presumably upstream, install PCRE 8
4 > as libpcre.so.1. Debian, for reasons best known to themselves, install
5 > it as libpcre.so.3. With Ubuntu still being the most widely accepted
6 > "standard" Linux desktop, this presents a problem when dealing with
7 > pre-compiled binaries.
8
9 Have you asked Debian why they are doing that?
10
11 > [...]
12
13 > I have found that creating a symlink in /usr/lib that points
14 > to /lib/libpcre.so.1 works, except that when you run ldconfig, it
15 > automatically creates another symlink from /usr/lib/libpcre.so.1 to
16 > libpcre.so.3. If you create the first symlink in /lib instead then the
17 > existing /lib/libpcre.so.1 holds after running ldconfig. The latter
18 > location is therefore probably preferable.
19
20 > Would anyone have any issue with adding this to our libpcre package? I
21 > don't foresee any problems. libpcre.so would obviously still point to
22 > libpcre.so.1. I'm pretty sure there will never be another libpcre.so.3
23 > as upstream have released PCRE2 as libpcre2, effectively an entirely
24 > separate library.
25
26 This looks like a bad hack. As you said above, it will confuse
27 ldconfig, unless some trickery with /lib vs /usr/lib is used.
28
29 IMHO providing compatibility symlinks for proprietary binary-only
30 programs isn't the task of the libpcre package. Patch the binary, or
31 have the depending package create the libpcre.so.3 symlink, but not in
32 /usr/lib or /lib, but in a location specific to that package.
33
34 I remember that long time ago we had a similar issue with motif and
35 icaclient (motif installing .so.4 but icaclient linking to .so.3).
36 See: https://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=204264#c4
37
38 Ulrich

Replies

Subject Author
Re: [gentoo-dev] libpcre.so.3 - Compatibility with Debian James Le Cuirot <chewi@g.o>