On Mon, Dec 19, 2005 at 01:07:26PM +0100, Magnus Hagander wrote:
> If FooApp is compiled against 8.0, it will then be unable to run if you
> upgrade libpq to 8.1. IIRC on Unix it will "fall forward" to the new
> version if it's just a minor version upgrade (correct me if I'm wrong).
> On windows, it will break with an ugly dialog box. Which is why DLL
> renames are usually only done for backwards incompatible changes.
Not quite, in UNIX you have a SONAME which is the file you search for
at runtime. This might end up being symlinked to a different version
than the one you linked against.
The argument for the name change is that then you can have both the old
version and the new versions installed at the same time. So when you
"upgrade" to 8.1, you don't actually remove the old libpq but keep both
around. Then programs using either will continue to work. On UNIX you
don't actually waste any diskspace because you can symlink them
together.
So it's only an issue if you have a policy of removing old versions of
libpq on upgrades... I'm not sure what's "best practice" on windows in
this area.
Have a nice day,
--
Martijn van Oosterhout <kleptog@svana.org> http://svana.org/kleptog/
> Patent. n. Genius is 5% inspiration and 95% perspiration. A patent is a
> tool for doing 5% of the work and then sitting around waiting for someone
> else to do the other 95% so you can sue them.