Bug#1136641: debian-policy: do not require shared libraries to change package name with soname changes

Hi,

On Thu, 2026-05-14 at 13:45 +0200, Bill Allombert wrote:
> On Thu, May 14, 2026 at 12:09:31PM +0200, Ansgar 🙀 wrote:
> 
> > We do not do that in practice and I often see libX removed due to
> > Breaks/Conflicts.
> 
> Please report them as bugs. There are little reason to conflict against
> such packages.  If libfoo-common is soname specific, it needs to be called
> libfooN-common.

We currently do *not* require perpetual coinstallability (or even
short-time coinstallability) of libraries with different SONAMEs, nor
do we currently require coinstallability of libraries with different
ABIs despite having the same SONAME.

So no, I won't report things that are non-bugs according to current
practice as bugs.

I also do not want to change current practice. If you want that, please
establish a consensus that we do want this change first. After that,
you could file bugs if you care about this problem.

(If we assume a ideal world, libraries would just not change their
SONAME ever nor would the kernel break ABI internally or with
userspace[1] either.)

Ansgar

  [1]: Yes, it does. Otherwise there would not be bugs titled "FTBFS on
newer kernels"