Hi, I just saw that the major version number was recently bumped on the osmocom rtl-sdr.
Unfortunately this seems to be causing upgrade problems because if a user updates the drivers to the new major version number (eg to get Blog V4 support), the soname is now different, and this means that all previously installed software that uses librtlsdr will need to be recompiled from scratch, and software from the package manager will simply be broken.
I'm not sure if the recent changes warrant a major version change and the problems that come with it?
Regards, Carl
To add to this here is a Twitter/X thread that the developer of SDR++ has put out, regarding the issues he's seeing with this major version number change.
https://twitter.com/ryzerth/status/1771016439681466697
Regards, Carl
On Fri, Mar 22, 2024 at 3:19 PM Carl Laufer admin@rtl-sdr.com wrote:
Hi, I just saw that the major version number was recently bumped on the osmocom rtl-sdr.
Unfortunately this seems to be causing upgrade problems because if a user updates the drivers to the new major version number (eg to get Blog V4 support), the soname is now different, and this means that all previously installed software that uses librtlsdr will need to be recompiled from scratch, and software from the package manager will simply be broken.
I'm not sure if the recent changes warrant a major version change and the problems that come with it?
Regards, Carl
Hi,
the reason why the version was bumped is because there are several forks of rtl-sdr that used version 0.8 and beyond, without changing the library name. Many people requested the release of a new version, and to avoid colissions of the version number with those forks, the major version was bumped to 2 as a 'leap forward'.
On 22.03.24 05:05, Carl Laufer wrote:
To add to this here is a Twitter/X thread that the developer of SDR++ has put out, regarding the issues he's seeing with this major version number change.
https://twitter.com/ryzerth/status/1771016439681466697 https://twitter.com/ryzerth/status/1771016439681466697
Interestingly the last reply in that thread is from someone who maintains one of those forks of rtl-sdr, and the first thing he did was change the version to 2.1 - so yeah, in the end it was useless.
We could probably revert the SOVERSION to 0, however, for those distributions that already picked up the change this would be pretty weird.
Regards, Steve
Hi Steve,
If the upstream osmocom soversion is bumped, then all forks will eventually need to follow too. Because software packages will begin getting written for version 2, then those forks will need to update to be useful to those programs.
I believe the soversion should only be bumped when there have been breaking non-backwards compatible API changes made. Nothing of that sort has happened with the recent pushes.
So IMO I think reverting the soversion to 0 is the best solution, and that should be pushed ASAP before the problem becomes more widespread. I just talked to the dev of SDR++ and he agrees with this solution too. The distro's that already picked it up probably should be notified that the soversion was bumped by mistake and that it's been reverted.
Regards, Carl Laufer
On Wed, Mar 27, 2024 at 9:15 AM Steve Markgraf steve@steve-m.de wrote:
Hi,
the reason why the version was bumped is because there are several forks of rtl-sdr that used version 0.8 and beyond, without changing the library name. Many people requested the release of a new version, and to avoid colissions of the version number with those forks, the major version was bumped to 2 as a 'leap forward'.
On 22.03.24 05:05, Carl Laufer wrote:
To add to this here is a Twitter/X thread that the developer of SDR++ has put out, regarding the issues he's seeing with this major version number change.
https://twitter.com/ryzerth/status/1771016439681466697 https://twitter.com/ryzerth/status/1771016439681466697
Interestingly the last reply in that thread is from someone who maintains one of those forks of rtl-sdr, and the first thing he did was change the version to 2.1 - so yeah, in the end it was useless.
We could probably revert the SOVERSION to 0, however, for those distributions that already picked up the change this would be pretty weird.
Regards, Steve
Hi guys,
FYI If the 2.x version of the package is installed, it will not be automatically replaced by version 0.x, even if 0.x is newer and 2.x is older. The APT package manager adheres to the semantic versioning scheme to identify the newer version.
Best Regards, Andrey
On 27 Mar 2024, at 00:11, Carl Laufer admin@rtl-sdr.com wrote:
Hi Steve,
If the upstream osmocom soversion is bumped, then all forks will eventually need to follow too. Because software packages will begin getting written for version 2, then those forks will need to update to be useful to those programs.
I believe the soversion should only be bumped when there have been breaking non-backwards compatible API changes made. Nothing of that sort has happened with the recent pushes.
So IMO I think reverting the soversion to 0 is the best solution, and that should be pushed ASAP before the problem becomes more widespread. I just talked to the dev of SDR++ and he agrees with this solution too. The distro's that already picked it up probably should be notified that the soversion was bumped by mistake and that it's been reverted.
Regards, Carl Laufer
On Wed, Mar 27, 2024 at 9:15 AM Steve Markgraf <steve@steve-m.de mailto:steve@steve-m.de> wrote:
Hi,
the reason why the version was bumped is because there are several forks of rtl-sdr that used version 0.8 and beyond, without changing the library name. Many people requested the release of a new version, and to avoid colissions of the version number with those forks, the major version was bumped to 2 as a 'leap forward'.
On 22.03.24 05:05, Carl Laufer wrote:
To add to this here is a Twitter/X thread that the developer of SDR++ has put out, regarding the issues he's seeing with this major version number change.
https://twitter.com/ryzerth/status/1771016439681466697 https://twitter.com/ryzerth/status/1771016439681466697
Interestingly the last reply in that thread is from someone who maintains one of those forks of rtl-sdr, and the first thing he did was change the version to 2.1 - so yeah, in the end it was useless.
We could probably revert the SOVERSION to 0, however, for those distributions that already picked up the change this would be pretty weird.
Regards, Steve
Carl Laufer admin@rtl-sdr.com writes:
If the upstream osmocom soversion is bumped, then all forks will eventually need to follow too. Because software packages will begin getting written for version 2, then those forks will need to update to be useful to those programs.
I think the real issue is what are forks doing and why.
There are basically two kinds:
[things that aren't forks that github wrongly labels forks, which are just personal copies, either to have the bits, or as staging areas for proposing changes]
a fork that intends to be compatible with a few features that are not yet in the main repo, or that have been rejected. here, the release versions and soversion should track more or less exactly
a fork that rejects the original repo, is renamed, and is its own thing
Then there are mirrors on different forges, often because some people don't like other's forges (e.g., because github is proprietary, or because !github is perceived as leaving out the used-to-monopoly crowd).
Often (not about this situation), I find that forks do not clearly state that they are a fork, what the plan is and why, and what the status is.
I have found this community to be particularly hard to understand in terms of fork status, relative to most others.
Overall, a healthy ecosystem So: for each fork, why does it exist, and is there a plan to fold it in?
-
Carl Laufer -
Greg Troxel -
Steve Markgraf -
Андрей Родионов