When building for platforms that don't allow .so versioning, it's sometimes nice to be able to see at a glance what version of the API the .so library supports. Here's some example code for adding this to non-linux platforms and not breaking linux platforms in the process:

SET( GENERIC_DLL_VERSION ${VERSION} )
SET( MYDLL_SOVERSION 1 )
 ...
ADD_LIBRARY(mydll SHARED ${mydll_SRCS})
target_link_libraries(mydll otherlib)
IF( WIN32 )
    SET_TARGET_PROPERTIES( mydll PROPERTIES
        OUTPUT_NAME "mydll-${MYDLL_SOVERSION}"
        VERSION ${GENERIC_DLL_VERSION} )
ELSE()
    SET_TARGET_PROPERTIES( mydll PROPERTIES
        VERSION ${GENERIC_DLL_VERSION}
        SOVERSION ${MYDLL_SOVERSION} )
ENDIF()

You will need to be sure to increment the VERSION and MYDLL_SOVERSION every time the program or the SOVERSION changes (respectively).

One thing I'd like to try in the future is add something to my unit tests that grep the source headers for the API and complain when it's changed to remind me to update the SOVERSION.

This page was initially populated by conversion from its original location in another wiki.