Date: Wed, 9 Mar 2005 10:28:44 -0500 From: John Baldwin <jhb@FreeBSD.org> To: Maxim Sobolev <sobomax@portaone.com> Cc: cvs-src@FreeBSD.org Subject: Re: cvs commit: src/sys/compat/linux linux_socket.c Message-ID: <200503091028.44842.jhb@FreeBSD.org> In-Reply-To: <422F087F.9030906@portaone.com> References: <200503070726.j277Qhp5059059@repoman.freebsd.org> <86k6oht386.fsf@xps.des.no> <422F087F.9030906@portaone.com>
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On Wednesday 09 March 2005 09:30 am, Maxim Sobolev wrote: > Dag-Erling Sm=F8rgrav wrote: > > Maxim Sobolev <sobomax@portaone.com> writes: > >>As I have said the binary program compiled on the newer system that > >>uses this flag in some cases may malfunction when executed on system > >>with older kernel due to the fact that that additional flag will > >>become no-op the program might get SIGPIPE unexpectedly. > > > > We've never cared about running newer binaries on older systems. It's > > the reverse that matters, and the change Alfred suggests does not > > break that. > > Even if we've never cared about that it really matters and IMHO we need > to start caring about that esp. considering that sendto(2) and friends > are very popular syscalls. That's not a big problem if you have sources > handy, but what if it's some third party tool which is only available in > binary code? > > Imagine that we are talking about some very big and very popular toolkit > such as for example JDK, which takes ages to go through all compliance > testing and such. Once it's packed, tested and rubberstamped for > distribution you have zero chance to convince vendor to release another > version that will run on both new and older systems even if it will mean > changing two or three lines of their code. The only thing the vendor can > do is to put some warning "will work correctly only starting from > release X.Y", therefore forcing all users who run releases X.Z, Z < Y, > and need this tool to upgrade otherwise perfectly working system(s). And such vendors are encouraged to target, e.g. 5.3 for the 5.x series sinc= e=20 that is the first "stable" release for that branch. This is how we've alwa= ys=20 handled things. Forwards compatibility is significantly harder to achieve= =20 than backwards compatibility. =2D-=20 John Baldwin <jhb@FreeBSD.org> <>< http://www.FreeBSD.org/~jhb/ "Power Users Use the Power to Serve" =3D http://www.FreeBSD.org
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