The LIB_DEPENDS macro uses ldconfig -r to check for library dependencies within the ports tree. There is a slowly increasing set of ports that create shared libraries, which do not use a shared library version, ldconfig can handle.

In order to support LIB_DEPENDS properly for those ports, it is necessasry for maintainers to create non-trivial patches within the port's build framework, which increases the maintenance efforts and risk to break the port and dependent ports on doing it wrong.

A better approach is needed that can handle and detect shared libraries with the upstream-provided library version-scheme.

At the moment the output of ldconfig -r is limited to lib<name>.so.X, where X indicates the shared library version. Since there is no way to fix the output of ldconfig -r on a short term across all supported FreeBSD versions, a different or enhanced approach is necessary.

Maintainers need to be able to

• ignore any specific shared library version as dependency, if the dependent port does not require a specific interface version
• provide an exact shared library version as dependency, if the dependent port requires this
  • or if multiple versions of the library might be installed through the ports tree (e.g. audio/portaudio*)

The syntax and creation of a LIB_DEPENDS must be

• as backwards-compatible as possible
• intuitive

The library detection code must be

• fast
• bullet-proof
  • libA.so.1, libA.so.2, libA.so.1.1, libA-1.so, libA-1.so.1 might different libraries or different versions of the same library

The following naming schemes for LIB_DEPENDS exist:

<name>:${PORTSDIR}/category/port
<name>.<version(single digit)>:${PORTSDIR}/category/port

If only a library name is provided, lib-depends: will search for a library lib<name>.so within the output of ldconfig -r If a library name with a version is provided, lib-depends: will search for either

• lib<name>.so.<version> or
• lib<name>.<version>.so

The following naming schemes for LIB_DEPENDS shall be introduced:

<name>:${PORTSDIR}/category/port
<name>.<version(single digit)>:${PORTSDIR}/category/port
<name>.<version(dot-separated digits)>:${PORTSDIR}/category/port
<name>-<version(dot-separated digits)>.<sversion>:${PORTSDIR}/category/port
lib<name>.so[<suffix>]:${PORTSDIR}/category/port

• <name>:${PORTSDIR}/category/port shall provide the following behaviour: look for lib<name>.so
• <name>.<version(single digit)>:${PORTSDIR}/category/port shall provide the following behaviour: look for
  • lib<name>.<version(single digit)>.so or
  • lib<name>.so.<version(single digit)> in the specified order
• <name>.<version(dot-separated digits)>:${PORTSDIR}/category/port shall provide the following behaviour: look for lib<name>.so.<version(dot-separated digits)>
• <name>-<version(dot-separated digits)>.<sversion>:${PORTSDIR}/category/port shall provide the following behaviour: look for lib<name>-<version(dot-separated digits)>.so.<sversion>
• lib<name>.so[<suffix>]:${PORTSDIR}/category/port shall provide the following behaviour: look for lib<name>.so[<suffix>]

LIB_DEPENDS= foo:${PORTSDIR}/devel/foo

lib-depends: searches for libfoo.so

LIB_DEPENDS= foo.3:${PORTSDIR}/devel/foo

lib-depends: searches for libfoo.3.so. If no such file could be found, libfoo.so.3 is searched for.

LIB_DEPENDS= foo.1.2.3:${PORTSDIR}/devel/foo \
             bar.4.5::${PORTSDIR}/devel/bar

lib-depends: searches for libfoo.so.1.2.3 and libbar.so.4.5

LIB_DEPENDS= foo-7.8:${PORTSDIR}/devel/foo

lib-depends: searches for libfoo-7.8.so

LIB_DEPENDS= foo-0.1.so.4:${PORTSDIR}/devel/foo

lib-depends: searches for libfoo-0.1.so.4

LIB_DEPENDS= libfoo.so.77:${PORTSDIR}/devel/foo \
             libbar-33.2.1.3u.so.1.2.3.4.5.6:${PORTSDIR}/devel/bar

lib-depends: searches for libfoo.so.77 and libbar-33.2.1.3u.so.1.2.3.4.5.6

The change to LIB_DEPENDS (or more specifically the lib-depends: target) will not provide any logic to verify that the specified library name can be actually used by the linker. This however might be provided by tools or functions outside of the scope of this proposal (e.g. portlint).