Symbol versioning (Was: [Bug general/24000] couple of testsuite fails with uclibc library)

[Mark Wielaard]

On Tue, Feb 19, 2019 at 07:59:53AM +0000, Ulf Hermann wrote:
> >>> Don't disable symbol versioning, without it binary compatibility is broken.
> >> As per the following commit disabled symbol versioning for uclibc
> >> https://sourceware.org/git/?p=elfutils.git;a=commit;
> >> h=bafacacaf7659a4933604662daba26a480b29a8d
> >>
> >> with uclibc,the test suite hangs in middle when compiled with Symbol
> >> versioning
> > 
> > hmmm. I think that commit might have been a mistake in hindsight.
> 
> The option to disable symbol versioning is appreciated here. I don't 
> think it's a mistake. There are platforms which don't support symbol 
> versioning at all.

The problem is that without it every elfutils release would (possibly)
break the ABI between the shared libraries and programs using them.
And we don't have/use a different mechanism to indicate symbols/ABI
changed. How do you prevent things breaking when upgrading the
elfutils libraries?

Cheers,

Mark