Re: [Open Babel] libopenbabel.so versions

[Michael B. <mb...@gm...>]

On Mon, Apr 23, 2012 at 03:26:22PM -0700, Craig James wrote:
> On Mon, Apr 23, 2012 at 3:20 PM, Michael Banck <mb...@gm...> wrote:
> >> I'm (finally) moving to the latest version of OpenBabel.  I discovered
> >> that after compiling, the .so version number is still
> >> libopenbabel.so.4 -- the same name as OpenBabel 2.2.x.  By my
> >> understanding of .so libraries, this means OpenBabel 2.3.1 is 100% ABI
> >> compatible with code compiled against OpenBabel 2.2.x.
> >>
> >> Is that right?  (If that's true, it's great news.)
> >
> > IIRC 2.2.x had libopenbabel.so.3 as SONAME, see e.g.
> >
> > http://packages.debian.org/search?keywords=libopenbabel3
> 
> Thanks for the link ... so why is it that my version of OpenBabel
> 2.2.x uses libopenbabel.4.0.0?  It was a developer's release, not a
> stable version.  I guess the .so version must have changed a long time
> before the official 2.3.x release.

That's it probably.  I believe it is customary to bump the SONAME once
the actual API break occurs.

OpenBabel does not use the odd/even numbering scheme to designate
developer and stable versions, so this complicates things slightly as
the bump has to happen at some point before the major version is
changed/released.


Michael