C++ ABI change, a breezy bit of badger, starting next week

[Matthias Klose]

On Fri, 2005-05-13 at 16:11 -0400, Jay Berkenbilt wrote:
> Matthias Klose <doko at ubuntu.com> wrote:
> 
> > - We limit the automatic import of packages from the Debian archives
> >   for a while (having a list of C++ packages which will not be imported)
> >   Same thing for manual uploads to Breezy.
> 
> Presumably, some currently unmodified debian packages will need to be
> modified to work with g++ 4.0, but then they can go back to being
> unmodified after debian's post-sarge C++ ABI change.  (I somewhat
> followed the thread on debian-devel about the C++ ABI change
> proposal.)
  http://lists.debian.org/debian-release/2005/04/msg00146.html
> Will there be some general mechanism to deal with this?

The mechanism should be described in the transition plan. What it lacks
is maybe a more detailed order of uploading these packages.

> I'm sure some packages will need patches to the code but others will
> just need changes to runtime library names.  I maintain a handful of
> C++ packages for debian (mostly libraries), and I would be eager to
> keep the Ubuntu versions equal to the debian versions as is the case
> now.  At a minimum, I'll plan to monitor the Ubuntu versions packages
> that I maintain for debian and, if necessary, post to Ubuntu's
> bugzilla when I upload versions that should work unmodified with
> Ubuntu.  Is this a sound approach?

It's our intention to revert/merge _all_ these changes when the C++ ABI
syncs again between Debian and Ubuntu. We have to change the library
names now for packages providing a library depending on libstdc++, and
will recompile all applications (without change) after the libraries
have been converted. All these patches are currently collected at
  https://www.ubuntulinux.org/wiki/CxxLibraryList
Feedback on this list or as followups on the bug reports is welcome.

> I hope my debian-maintainer-centric post on this topic isn't taken in
> the wrong way -- I plan to become more involved with Ubuntu when my
> schedule lightens up a bit, but before that happens, I at least want
> to be an Ununtu-friendly debian developer. :-) Anyway, I imagine
> others will have similar concerns.  Thanks.

Not at all d-m-c! Your input is very welcome. We made the transition
just after the hoary release to get feedback on the buildability and
usabilty of packages as early as possible and hope to converge after a
short period of time.

  Matthias