Russ Allbery wrote:
Package: debian-policy Version: 3.8.0.1 Severity: minor I read through the shared library sections of Policy a few times last night and can't find anywhere where Policy unambiguously recommends always including a version in SONAME for public libraries. If you don't have a version, you can't represent the library in the shlibs format, so there's an implicit recommendation, but I think it would be better to make it explicit.
I think the first sentence of 8.1 with the footnote 47 give an answer, but: a footnote (IMO) is not normative, and a "a good idea" is too weak. [8.1]The run-time shared library needs to be placed in a package whose name changes whenever the shared object version changes.[47]
[47]Since it is common place to install several versions of a package that just provides shared libraries, it is a good idea that the library package should not contain any extraneous non-versioned files, unless they happen to be in versioned directories.
ciao cate