Re: Bump mainline version number

[Ian Lance Taylor <ian at airs dot com>]

Zack Weinberg <zack@codesourcery.com> writes:

> (I don't think shared libraries should be used *at all* unless one is
> prepared not to change their ABI ever again, but that's a separate
> issue.)

That's an unrealistic position for the binutils.  I agree that should
be a goal for a library which is released purely as a library.
However, the binutils are a collection of programs all of which use
the same library, libbfd.  Supporting libbfd as a shared library is a
natural way to decrease the disk and swap space required to run the
programs.

That is independent of whether the libbfd ABI should ever change.
Very few programs other than the binutils and gdb actually use libbfd.
I think it is perfectly acceptable to change the shared libbfd ABI for
each binutils release.

Ian