From owner-freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Sat Oct 10 17:11:53 2009 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [IPv6:2001:4f8:fff6::34]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 8015210656C0; Sat, 10 Oct 2009 17:11:53 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from des@des.no) Received: from tim.des.no (tim.des.no [194.63.250.121]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 419C88FC08; Sat, 10 Oct 2009 17:11:51 +0000 (UTC) Received: from ds4.des.no (des.no [84.49.246.2]) by smtp.des.no (Postfix) with ESMTP id A0A516D41B; Sat, 10 Oct 2009 17:11:50 +0000 (UTC) Received: by ds4.des.no (Postfix, from userid 1001) id 48F0684503; Sat, 10 Oct 2009 19:11:50 +0200 (CEST) From: =?utf-8?Q?Dag-Erling_Sm=C3=B8rgrav?= To: "Simon L. Nielsen" References: <4ABBD5FA.5070507@memberwebs.com> <20091010142758.GB1225@arthur.nitro.dk> Date: Sat, 10 Oct 2009 19:11:50 +0200 In-Reply-To: <20091010142758.GB1225@arthur.nitro.dk> (Simon L. Nielsen's message of "Sat, 10 Oct 2009 16:27:58 +0200") Message-ID: <86d44vp415.fsf@ds4.des.no> User-Agent: Gnus/5.13 (Gnus v5.13) Emacs/23.0.95 (berkeley-unix) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Cc: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org, stef@memberwebs.com Subject: Re: Is the FreeBSD ABI compatibility policy documented anywhere X-BeenThere: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: Technical Discussions relating to FreeBSD List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Sat, 10 Oct 2009 17:11:53 -0000 "Simon L. Nielsen" writes: > It's not entirely that simple. The ABI on a stable branch like 7.x > should be backward compatible, but there isn't a guarantee of forward > compatibility. IE, 7.0 binary should be able to run on 7.x, but a 7.2 > binary might not run on 7.0. It should be more or less the same with > the API's. > > PS. do note that there is no 100% guarantee. Correct, but we're getting closer to that now that we have symbol versioning - although we won't reach 100% until we have versioned symbols in *all* libraries, which is currently not the case. Even then, a developer might break the ABI by mistake, but hopefully we'd catch that before it made it into a release. DES --=20 Dag-Erling Sm=C3=B8rgrav - des@des.no