Re: version conflict for package "Tcl": TCL_VERSION vs TCL_PATCH_LEVEL

Olaf Dietrich wrote:
Neil Madden <nem@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>:
[...]
They shouldn't be. Minor versions should be compatible -- only major version changes can break compatibility (at least, that's how it's supposed to work).

The current major version number is 8, the current minor version
number is 5. As far as I know, minor versions are not supposed to
be binary compatible (that's why there are always different names
for the tcl-libraries with different minor version, i.e. libtcl8.4.so,
libtcl8.5.so etc. and also different include directories for the
tcl-header files).

That's what the stubs mechanism is for -- maintains forward and backward binary compatibility. For instance, you can link against the 8.5 stub lib and then load the resulting extension into an 8.4 interpreter fine (so long as you don't need specific 8.5 APIs, of course). Likewise an extension linked against the 8.4 stub lib should load into an 8.5 interp no problem.

-- Neil
.

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