ABI checking
There is no day so wasted that you can’t take notes about what didn’t work, so here’s some talk about ABI-compliance-checking. ABI-compliance, or ABI-compatibility, is roughly when a shared library can be changed (to a different version, usually an update and upgrade) and users of that shared library (applications, or other libraries) just work with the new version. This requires some discipline, and there are tools to help out.
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One way to help maintain binary compatibility is to use tools that check the ABI: figure out the shape of the ABI in one version, the shape in another version, and compare those shapes. KDE Frameworks have checks in place, like this one (that link assumes openSUSE and Qt 5.15 are still in use and that there was a recent successful build).
Generally, an ABI-shape getting bigger is not a problem (from a technical perspective, although you can have all kinds of semantic mix-ups). Things that go away – functions, variables, etc. – those are problematic.
Calamares is a Linux system installer – it can be customized by Linux distro’s to act as the installer for their ISO images. It’s a C++ program offering modules for all kinds of system-installation services. It also offers an ABI: the modules use the ABI of the Calamares libraries to talk to the main program. Calamares supports “third-party” modules, e.g. modules specific to one distro or otherwise customized, and for those third-party modules, ABI compatibility suddenly becomes an issue: it would be nice if they didn’t have to be recompiled when a new Calamares library comes out. That can only happen if the Calamares libraries commit to ABI compatibility.
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