PKGKDE-SYMBOLSHELPER(1)

NAME
pkgkde-symbolshelper - a tool to help simplify managing C++ symbols files for the KDE project.

SYNOPSIS
pkgkde-symbolshelper create | patch | batchpatch | rewrite

DESCRIPTION
pkgkde-symbolshelper provides helps to automate the process of managing your deb-symbols(5) files.

There are four commands, create, patch, batchpatch, and rewrite.

CREATING SYMBOLS FILE
To create the symbols file for a library package libfoo1 whose version is 1.7

    pkgkde-gensymbols -plibfoo1 -v1.7 -Osymbols.amd64 -edebian/libfoo1/usr/lib/libfoo.so.1
    pkgkde-symbolshelper create -o debian/libfoo1.symbols -v 1.7 symbols.amd64

The above commands should be invoked from the top level directory of your package's source after having built the package before cleaning, so that debian/libfoo1/usr/lib/libfoo.so.1 exists).

"symbols.amd64" is the filename of the intermediate symbols file that will be generated by pkgkde-gensymbols. This filename must be in the format "name.architecture" or "name_architecture" where "architecture" is the cpu architecture on which you have built this package.

UPDATING A SYMBOLS FILE FOR A NEW LIBRARY VERSION
After building a new version of the library (for instance 1.8 of our libfoo1 library from above), symbols may have been added or removed, and in both cases one must check and update the symbols file. During the build, a diff between the current symbols file and the one based on the current built library will printed in the output. pkgkde-symbolshelper can read the build log to find this diff, to save the build log one may want to do:

    dpkg-buildpackage | tee buildlog
    pkgkde-symbolshelper patch -p libfoo1 -v 1.8 < buildlog

UPDATING MULTIPLE SYMBOLS FILES AT ONCE
For source packages that provide multiple binary library packages, it is useful to have a method to patch all the symbol files at once, pkgkde-symbolshelper offers a way to do this using the batchpatch command. For example:

    pkgkde-symbolshelper batchpatch -v 1.8 < buildlog

batchpatch can also be of use when one wants to update symbol files for multiple architectures at once. There is an additional command pkgkde-getbuildlogs that will download the build logs for multiple architectures from Debian's build servers.

    pkgkde-getbuildlogs
    pkgkde-symbolshelper batchpatch -v 1.8 foo_unstable_logs/foo_1.8-1*.build

NOTES
This man page was based text written by others from the pkg-kde symbols file help page.

SEE ALSO
https://qt-kde-team.pages.debian.net/symbolfiles.html
https://people.redhat.com/drepper/symbol-versioning
https://people.redhat.com/drepper/goodpractice.pdf
https://people.redhat.com/drepper/dsohowto.pdf
dpkg-gensymbols(1), deb-symbols(5), dpkg-shlibdeps(1).