Comment 11 for bug 6956

Message-id: <email address hidden>
Date: Wed, 7 Jul 2004 09:36:51 +0100
From: "Alastair McKinstry" <email address hidden>
To: <email address hidden>
Cc: <email address hidden>
Subject: #257667: confirmed

Ok, confirmed that this is specified by POSIX.

This is a bug in principle rather than current practice; in principle, the implementation
could use any _S* symbol used
in slang and break slang, and slang break other packages.
In practice this is not currently happening. So I can forsee
the RM downgrading this bug for release.

I am preparing and testing a fix. However this is going to break
the ABI, and a bunch of packages are going to need to be
rebuilt. Ideally the SONAME should change; an old library
would always be RC and so can't be kept for backwards compatibiltiy in principle
...
I will forward a patch changing symbols to upstream recommendinga a SONAME change.
However upstream has been
unresponsive for at least the last year.

If the SONAME changes, then I will take the opportunity to also
fix #47093.

So, I'm working on it. I'll be busy preparing patches to
packages that break, and propose the change on debian-devel;
possibly NMUing all the packages (in DELAYED) if need be.
Please be patient; As this bug does not currently break
things, but the fix does, correctness rather than haste
are of the essence.

Regards
Alastair