Yes, it’s the next instalment of “cross-platform programming for people who don’t use Macs very much”. You want to give your dynamic library a version number, probably of the format major.minor.patchlevel. Regardless of marketing concerns, this helps with dependency management if you choose a version convention such that binary-compatible revisions of the libraries can be easily discovered. What could possibly go wrong?
The linker will treat your version number in the following way (from the APSL-licensed ld64/ld/Options.cpp) if you’re building a 32-bit library:
//
// Parses number of form X[.Y[.Z]] into a uint32_t where the nibbles are xxxx.yy.zz
//
uint32_t Options::parseVersionNumber32(const char* versionString)
{
uint32_t x = 0;
uint32_t y = 0;
uint32_t z = 0;
char* end;
x = strtoul(versionString, &end, 10);
if ( *end == '.' ) {
y = strtoul(&end[1], &end, 10);
if ( *end == '.' ) {
z = strtoul(&end[1], &end, 10);
}
}
if ( (*end != '\0') || (x > 0xffff) || (y > 0xff) || (z > 0xff) )
throwf("malformed 32-bit x.y.z version number: %s", versionString);
return (x << 16) | ( y << 8 ) | z;
}
and like this if you’re building a 64-bit library (I’ve corrected an obvious typo in the comment here):
//
// Parses number of form A[.B[.C[.D[.E]]]] into a uint64_t where the bits are a24.b10.c10.d10.e10
//
uint64_t Options::parseVersionNumber64(const char* versionString)
{
uint64_t a = 0;
uint64_t b = 0;
uint64_t c = 0;
uint64_t d = 0;
uint64_t e = 0;
char* end;
a = strtoul(versionString, &end, 10);
if ( *end == '.' ) {
b = strtoul(&end[1], &end, 10);
if ( *end == '.' ) {
c = strtoul(&end[1], &end, 10);
if ( *end == '.' ) {
d = strtoul(&end[1], &end, 10);
if ( *end == '.' ) {
e = strtoul(&end[1], &end, 10);
}
}
}
}
if ( (*end != '\0') || (a > 0xFFFFFF) || (b > 0x3FF) || (c > 0x3FF) || (d > 0x3FF) || (e > 0x3FF) )
throwf("malformed 64-bit a.b.c.d.e version number: %s", versionString);
return (a << 40) | ( b << 30 ) | ( c << 20 ) | ( d << 10 ) | e;
}
The specific choice of bit widths in both variants is weird (why would you have more major versions than patchlevel versions?) and the move from 32-bit to 64-bit makes no sense to me at all. Nonetheless, there’s a general rule:
Don’t use your SCM revision number in your version numbering scheme.
The rule of thumb is that the major version can always be less than 65536, the minor versions can always be less than 256 and you can always have up to two minor version numbers. Trying to supply a version number that doesn’t fit in the bitfields defined here will be a linker error, and you will not go into (address) space today.
