You can reboot the system to take care of the reload. That's vastly simpler than updating all dependent programs, especially since updating dependent programs would likely come with other changes that you may not be ready for.
And yes, this is mostly useful for taking bug fixes, which most mature libraries release without API changes.
I disagree about “vastly simpler”. Only when you disregard all the complexity that managing shared libraries bring. Presumably all dependent packages will ship their own updates at some point and will be rebuilt anyway. And yes in a very specific case of having to emergency ship critical fix shared library is slightly advantageous but at what cost?
If by "reload" you mean "drop in an updated shared library and let the runtime loader do its job", I suppose so.
Yes, it only applies if you don't make any API (and ABI) changes, but that's what major, minor, patch versioning is for, and stable projects can go a long way on minor and patch versions...
