[gnutls-dev] gnutls's sonames

[Tim Ringenbach]

Hi,
I'm trying to improve gaim's (http://gaim.sf.net) autopackage
(http://autopackage.org).

Our ssl support is done via plugins, so we have a ssl-nss.so plugin for
mozilla nss, and a ssl-gnutls.so for gnutls. The autopackage compiles
both, and whatever is available at runtime is used.

Currently, the ssl-gnutls plugin depends upon libgnutls.so.11. However,
many people have a version of gnutls with a different soname, such as
libgnutls.so.10 or libgnutls.so.7, and I hear a libgnutls.so.12 is out
now too.

What I'm probably going to do is build multiple versions of the plugin
against each version of gnutls. So I'll have a ssl-gnutls10.so and a
ssl-gnutsl11.so, etc. I expect setting up the build environment for this
will be a bit tricky though.

What is bound to make it even trickier though, is that you don't seem to
document when you change your soname. Your version numbers seem to have
nothing to do with your so version, and your NEWS doesn't seem to
mention anything about such changes. So I have no idea what versions of
gnutls I need.

So what's up with this? Is this documented somewhere I can't find, or
why isn't it documented?

Also any tips on setting up a build enviroment for what I'm wanting to do?

--Tim Ringenbach