[webkit-gtk] ABI compatibility between releases

[Gustavo Noronha Silva]

Hey,

On Fri, 2011-05-13 at 15:57 +1200, Gavin Lambert wrote:
> Quoth Gustavo Noronha Silva:
> > WebKitGTK+ 1.2.x is parallel installable with WebKitGTK+ 1.4.x, so the
> > same thing you're talking about above applies to WebKitGTK+. You can
> > still run applications that use WebKitGTK+ 1.2.x, you just need to keep
> > shipping it.
> 
> Are you sure about that?  Admittedly I'm a newbie at figuring out the whole
> packaging thing, so I could be mistaken, but it looks like the current bits
> in the SVN 1.4 branch have the same WEBKITGTK_API_VERSION and thus want to
> install to /usr[/local]/webkit-1.0/*, just like 1.1.x/1.2.x did.  Doesn't
> that make them *not* parallel installable?

I am. But here's where the misunderstanding lies: WebKitGTK+ 1.4.x is
API compatible with 1.2.x, and to make that effectively so we kept the
pkg-config files and include files named the same as the 1.2.x versions,
so that you can simply install 1.4.x, rebuild your app and it will be
using 1.4.x.

So the development bits are not parallel installable (by design), but
the runtime bits are, and that is what is needed for third party and
non-free applications to work.

Cheers,

-- 
Gustavo Noronha Silva <gns at gnome.org>
GNOME Project