[gnutls-devel] Symbol versioning in gnutls broken -> crashes

[Nikos Mavrogiannopoulos]

On Fri, 2014-09-12 at 18:22 +0200, Andreas Metzler wrote:

> > Hi Andreas,
> >  I get back on that, as I noticed that now applications linked against
> > gnutls in fedora wouldn't work in debian and vice-versa. While that may
> > not be an issue in software compiled in debian for debian, it will be
> > for any other software. For example I use a debian-based docker
> > container to test the openconnect server, and that fails to execute the
> > server if compiled in any other system. Closed source programs using
> > gnutls will have the same issue.
> Hello,
> yes, that is exactly as expected. It sucks but afaict it could not be
> avoided. Fixing the symbol versioning breaks the ABI.  The arguments
> for not breaking the ABI by changing the symbol-versioning in GnuTLS
> upstream *now* are are the same ones as in May.
> OTOH we in Debian needed to fix the symbol versioning because we
> care about partial upgrades.
> 
> It will therefore continue to be broken until GnuTLS upstream bumps
> the symbol-versioning (and the soname) and Debian picks up this
> version. 

Indeed, but the ABI in 3.x is fixed since years and will remain fixed
for years too; there is no plan to change it. Why not change the ABI in
the old releases as a work around? Having a different ABI in the latest
release ensures that debian will remain binary incompatible with any
software build with modern gnutls for the foreseeable future.

regards,
Nikos