[PyQt] SIP/PyQt ABI breakages

[Phil Thompson]

On Mon, 21 Nov 2011 11:04:05 +0000, Jeremy Sanders
<jeremy at jeremysanders.net> wrote:
> Hi - I've been seeing some ABI breakages in PyQt applications (which
> compile 
> against PyQt and SIP) in some Linux packages recently:
> 
> e.g., https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=755355
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/pykde4/+bug/826321
>
http://groups.google.com/group/linux.debian.bugs.dist/browse_thread/thread/e44754a502fd95c0/8c71c436a17dac1f?show_docid=8c71c436a17dac1f
> 
> This seemed to happen somewhere between sip 4.12.1 and 4.12.3 or
> PyQt4-4.8.3 
> and PyQt4-4.8.4 (at least for Veusz in Fedora 15).
> 
> Was there an explict change where the PyQt4.QtCore module version
changed?
> I 
> can't see it in the changelogs. It's unclear to me whether it was a
change 
> in sip or PyQt that caused the problem.
> 
> Is there a better way to deal with breakage when SIP or PyQt4 is
updated?

That's the right way to deal with it - raise an exception when it detects
that incompatible versions are being used. The bugs are in the binary
packages that are dependent on SIP and PyQt - they need to be rebuilt when
the internal ABI changes. Obviously I need to do a better job in
documenting when those changes happen - but I would expect packagers to be
slightly more on the ball than they seem to be.

Phil