On Tue, Dec 3, 2013 at 12:06 AM, Dan Horák <dan@danny.cz> wrote:
On Mon, 2 Dec 2013 21:42:10 -0700
Dave Johansen <davejohansen@gmail.com> wrote:

> On Mon, Dec 2, 2013 at 8:19 AM, Kevin Fenzi <kevin@scrye.com> wrote:
>
> > On Mon, 2 Dec 2013 09:45:44 +0400
> > Peter Lemenkov <lemenkov@gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > > Hello All!
> > >
> > > 2013/12/2 Dave Johansen <davejohansen@gmail.com>:
> > > > I recently submitted ODB 2.2 to the EPEL for EL 5/6 and version
> > > > 2.3 has been released (
> > > > http://codesynthesis.com/pipermail/odb-announcements/2013/000037.html
> > > > ). The wiki seems to indicate that updating software for feature
> > > > releases is discouraged (
> > > > https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/EPEL_Updates_Policy#Stable_Releases
> > > > ), so is updating ODB to 2.3 in the EPEL not really possible?
> > > > Assuming that's the case, is there a recommended solution for
> > > > maintaining access to newer versions of ODB for EL users?
> > >
> > > ODB is still a "young" package (in terms of existing in EL
> > > repositories) so I would update it anyway. However in the future
> > > ypu'd better to provide parallel-installable odb30, odb40 etc
> > > packages.
> >
> > The questions to ask are:
> >
> > Does the upgrade require intervention? ie, if someone did the
> > upgrade would they have to manually change config files, or migrate
> > databases or whatever?
> >
>
> No, the 2.3 version just adds some features and there wouldn't be any
> needed changes to config files or databases to support the update.
>
>
> > Next, is the package a gui one that changes look and feel? ie, would
> > some user who updated suddenly have to relearn where the various
> > options are?
> >
>
> There's no GUI or user facing part of it, so it would be effect
> developers but not users.
>
>
> > Finally, does it change abi/api any? If it was updated would people
> > have to rebuild other things to work with it?
> >
>
> There were additions to the API to support the new features and I'm
> guessing that there may be ABI changes as well. Basically, I'm
> guessing that a rebuild would be necessary.

you can easily check the possible API/ABI difference with the
abi-compliance-checker tool

I put in a request to have it added to upstream-tracker.org and it looks like 2.3 does have ABI breakage issues:
http://upstream-tracker.org/versions/libodb.html