Re: add libssh.pc for pkg-config?

["Bernhard R. Link" <brlink@xxxxxxxxxx>]

* Aris Adamantiadis <aris@xxxxxxxxxxxx> [091030 11:33]:
> It might become a packaging issue. Let's say that someone wants to have
> both libssh0.3.4-dev and libssh0.4-dev: the library files are different
> indeed (libssh.so.0.3.4 and libssh.so.0.4.0) but the include files are
> in the same directory (/usr/include/libssh/).

From the view of the linker, it is libssh.so in both cases.
(and it's not libssh.so.0.3.4 anyway, but libssh.so.3.4.0 as that number
is the ABI version and not the library version.)

> Then it may make sense of giving out a script that can point to the good
> include directory (/usr/include/libssh0.4) when needed. That directory
> would have a symbolic link "libssh" to itself so people can continue
> including "libssh/libssh.h" as usual.
>
> I really think it's a package problem and thus something to provide with
> packages. Anyone have taken a look at the debian package system yet ?

While one could move both headers and .so file to some non-standard
locations (and I must admit some Debian packages even do so), the only
need is if you want to compile some programs against the one and some
programs against the other, without changing the installed -dev packages
in between (as the library packages itself have no problem to be
installed at the same time, so it is only about the time of
compiling/linking).

For this there should be only a need if many hardly maintained programs
depend on older version of the library and the API of libssh changes too
heavily too often to cope with that.

And I hope changing the API incompatibly so often is not planed for
libssh's future, so there should not be any need for that anyway.

Hochachtungsvoll,
	Bernhard R. Link
-- 
"Never contain programs so few bugs, as when no debugging tools are available!"
	Niklaus Wirth