[vtkusers] Versioning mechanism for shared libs

[Rene Tschirley]

Dear list,


I really think that vtk should record the vtk version name in the shared
libraries' dynamic section. Any forgetful person like me would appreciate
it that a dynamically linked binary gets exactly that shared library
loaded which it has been linked with at compile time. vtk versions and
libraries change, but not every application gets compiled with the new
version. So I'd like to leave old libraries installed (and the header
files for a chance to modify and compile old applications later) and
collect several versions.

According to a reply to a posting in gnu.gcc.help and a paper located at
http://www.usenix.org/publications/library/proceedings/als2000/full_papers/browndavid/browndavid_html/this
can be done at least with the GNU linker on Solaris (ld option -h) and
Linux (ld option -soname/-hname) and I'm testing this with my
installation. Does anyone see a good reason why this isn't the default?


Bye,
	René

-- 
Dipl.-Inform. René Tschirley              http://www.cs.tu-berlin.de/~pooh
TU Berlin, Computer Graphics and Computer Assisted Medicine research group