EPICS Base Library sonames

[Ralph Lange <Ralph.Lange@gmx.de>]

Dear core-talkers,

I am asked for a local ITER decision regarding the numbering of EPICS Base shared libraries in ITER's CODAC Core System.

What I see is that the soname numbering is unchanged wrt 3.14, i.e.
-r--r--r-- 1 ralph ralph 3963210 Oct  6 13:04 libCom.a
lrwxrwxrwx 1 ralph ralph      14 Oct  6 13:04 libCom.so -> libCom.so.3.15
-r-xr-xr-x 1 ralph ralph 1844208 Oct  6 13:04 libCom.so.3.15

Is it safe to assume that all shared libraries in 3.15 will be binary compatible?
Given that we have C++ (code and APIs) in those libraries, which is more likely to break compatibility than standard C stuff, I would say; no.
(See [1], bottom of page.)

If you agree: shouldn't the sonames include the next digit of the EPICS version, to be safe?

Cheers,
~Ralph

[1] http://tldp.org/HOWTO/Program-Library-HOWTO/shared-libraries.html