2006.01.03 00:27 "Re: [Tiff] Outrageous profile tag sizes reported by libtiff 3.8.0", by Jay Berkenbilt

A bit of testing shows that previously the third parameter of TIFFGetField() was of type uint32 when retrieving TIFFTAG_ICCPROFILE, TIFFTAG_PHOTOSHOP, TIFFTAG_RICHTIFFIPTC, TIFFTAG_XMLPACKET, but in 3.8.0 the size is a uint16. Unfortunately this interface is not fully defined by a header file since it is based on a variable argument list. Libtiff 3.8.0 is *not* binary compatible with previous releases.

The TIFFGetField() documentation does not address these tags.

For such a small change, I would vote for reverting it rather than introducing a binary incompatibility. Library ABI changes are a big deal for distributions, so it would be shame to have to have one for such a small change. I doubt many debian applications or libraries use these tags, but it's certainly possible that some do and likely that some debian users use them in their own programs. I was hoping that the next ABI change would coincide with a library with release

that used full symbol versioning and took advantage of one big chance to break everything that needs breaking all at once.

Is there a chance that this change will be reverted, or are we stuck with it?

--
Jay Berkenbilt <ejb@ql.org>