Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!mcsun!ukc!edcastle!cs.ed.ac.uk!cs.edinburgh.ac.uk!gdmr
From: gdmr@cs.edinburgh.ac.uk (George Ross)
Newsgroups: comp.windows.x
Subject: Re: Shared Libraries and Patches
Message-ID: <510@skye.cs.ed.ac.uk>
Date: 3 Oct 90 10:12:50 GMT
References: <9010021304.AA01874@Morgan.COM> <9010021331.AA22861@expire.lcs.mit.edu>
Sender: nnews@cs.ed.ac.uk
Reply-To: gdmr@cs.edinburgh.ac.uk (George Ross)
Organization: Department of Computer Science, Edinburgh University
Lines: 39

In article <9010021331.AA22861@expire.lcs.mit.edu>, rws@EXPO.LCS.MIT.EDU (Bob Scheifler) writes:
> The Sun shared library mechanism seems magic enough and fragile enough,
> especially in the area of numbers, that we hesitate to make any changes
> here.  Perhaps you'd like to make such changes locally and try them for
> a few months (gratuitously installing new versions from time to time)
> to see if it really works?

When we switched to X11R4 we found we couldn't use the distribution's
idea of revision level.  We already had shared libraries for R3, with a
major number of 11 and a minor number of 3.  We wanted to run in parallel 
for a while so we invented a new major number of 1104 for the R4 libraries,
with the minor number being the patchlevel of the library.  We started out
using LD_LIBRARY_PATH to switch between versions, and when we went over
completely to R4 we just moved all the libraries into the right place.
We still have the R3 libraries for those applications that still need them,
and we usually keep around one or two previous versions of the R4 libraries
for those clients and applications that haven't been restarted since the
new versions were put up.  Here's what we currently have:

[cs1mgr]gdmr: ls /usr/local/lib/libX*
/usr/local/lib/libX.a                   /usr/local/lib/libXinput.a
/usr/local/lib/libX10.a                 /usr/local/lib/libXmu.a
/usr/local/lib/libX11.a                 /usr/local/lib/libXmu.sa.1104.7
/usr/local/lib/libX11.so.11.3           /usr/local/lib/libXmu.so.11.3
/usr/local/lib/libX11.so.1104.7         /usr/local/lib/libXmu.so.1104.7
/usr/local/lib/libXau.a                 /usr/local/lib/libXport.so.1.1
/usr/local/lib/libXaw.a                 /usr/local/lib/libXt.a
/usr/local/lib/libXaw.so.11.3           /usr/local/lib/libXt.sa.1104.14
/usr/local/lib/libXaw.so.1104.11        /usr/local/lib/libXt.sa.1104.17
/usr/local/lib/libXcu.a                 /usr/local/lib/libXt.so.11.3
/usr/local/lib/libXdmcp.a               /usr/local/lib/libXt.so.1104.14
/usr/local/lib/libXext.a                /usr/local/lib/libXt.so.1104.17
/usr/local/lib/libXim.a                 /usr/local/lib/libXw.a

Note two versions of libXt.  We've had no problems with this scheme at all.

------------------------------------------------------------------------
George D M Ross, Department of Computer Science, University of Edinburgh
031-667 1081 x2730       gdmr@uk.ac.ed.cs (or cs.ed.ac.uk if you prefer)