[CMake] Mostly O.T. Need advice on Mac OS X compatibility version for libraries

[Alan W. Irwin]

On 2008-04-03 21:11+0200 Alexander Neundorf wrote:

> Here's a feature request for the versioning stuff on OSX:
>
> http://public.kitware.com/Bug/view.php?id=4383

Hi Alex:

Thanks very much for that important reference on this issue.

The rest of my comments are directed to Brad who has made a considerable
number of notes at the above URL.

I encourage you to push ahead with an implementation of your ideas so
that 2.6.0 will have a good cross-platform library versioning scheme.  (To
get around the problem for 2.4.8, it appears both PLplot and libLASi are
going to have to use a Mac-only workaround which I would prefer to avoid by
moving to 2.6.0 if it has a good cross-platform library versioning scheme.)

Currently, it appears you are considering the idea of adopting the libtool
cross-platform library versioning scheme.  I like that idea since a very
large fraction of CMake users who are concerned with library versioning
(i.e., the Unix users) are familiar with what libtools does in this regard.
The rules are carefully laid out (from the perspective of those putting
together a build system for their package) at
http://www.gnu.org/software/libtool/manual.html#Updating-version-info. Those
rules don't seem natural from a pure Linux perspective (I think this is the
basis of Alex's objection), but I believe you when you say nothing simpler
could handle the full cross-platform case.  In any case, it is easy enough
to follow those rules.  I did that for years when PLplot and some of my
other projects were configured and built with autotools and wouldn't mind
going back to using those same rules for CMake.

Alan
__________________________
Alan W. Irwin

Astronomical research affiliation with Department of Physics and Astronomy,
University of Victoria (astrowww.phys.uvic.ca).

Programming affiliations with the FreeEOS equation-of-state implementation
for stellar interiors (freeeos.sf.net); PLplot scientific plotting software
package (plplot.org); the libLASi project (unifont.org/lasi); the Loads of
Linux Links project (loll.sf.net); and the Linux Brochure Project
(lbproject.sf.net).
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Linux-powered Science
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