Important Notice: Our web hosting provider recently started charging us for additional visits, which was unexpected. In response, we're seeking donations. Depending on the situation, we may explore different monetization options for our Community and Expert Contributors. It's crucial to provide more returns for their expertise and offer more Expert Validated Answers or AI Validated Answers. Learn more about our hosting issue here.

Why is there only a single version of each shared library in the official repositories?

April 26, 2017library official repositories Shared version

0

Posted

Why is there only a single version of each shared library in the official repositories?

1 Answer

0

Posted

Several distros, such as Debian, have different versions of shared libraries packaged as different packages: libfoo1, libfoo2, libfoo3 and so on. In this way it is possible to have apps compiled against different versions of libfoo installed on the same system. Unlike Debian, Arch is a rolling-release cutting-edge distribution. The most visible trait of a cutting-edge distribution is availability of the latest versions of software in the repositories; in the case of Arch it also means that only the latest versions of all packages are officially supported. By dropping support for outdated software, package maintainers are able to spend more time ensuring the newest versions work as expected. As soon as a new version of a shared library becomes available from upstream, it is added to the repositories and affected packages are rebuilt to utilize the new version.