Reagan Cattledog Links - reverifiable COW BOW links

Thinking about updating shared libraries:

Shared libraries' true advantage is their true disadvantage: multiple users can be updated, whether for good or ill.

Perhaps what we need are shared library linkages that are not automatically updated. Where an update is marked pending, encouraging  the user of the library to update it asap, but the change is not made.

I am calling this a reverifiable COW link. A link,that is broken when somebody else writes to the linked object (hence COW, Copy on Write, or BOW, Break on Write).  But which is reverifiable. Retestable.  (As one of my friends says "If you really believe in unit tests..."  (I do, he doesn't).

I would like very much to be able to have acronym COWBOY instead of COW BOW.  But I am humour deprived.

In the meantime I can call them Reagan Cattledog links.  Get it? BOW, as in bowwow, dog.  Reagan, as in "trust, but verify."

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This not just for shared libraries.  Any sharing.  web pages. Like the "cached link" I have described elsewhere.  Cached links are really just COW BOW links which are assumed to be updated when the linkee comes back online.