DevConf.CZ 2020

One of the most important jobs for a library maintainer is to keep the library's exported interfaces stable. Unexpected symbols removal (API/ABI breakage) can lead to incompatibility between versions, forcing all applications using the library to be modified to work with the new incompatible version. This is specially complicated when the library is part of an Operational System, where all the components must work well together and are independently updated. This talk will focus on symbol versioning, one of the most powerful techniques used to keep a C library interface stable, and will present abimap, a tool to automate the maintenance of symbol map files. Integrate abimap into the build process and it will automatically update the library symbol version script. The expected audience are developers, specially those who deal with stable software releasing, updates, and packaging.