Date: Sat, 10 May 2008 13:50:48 +0100 (BST) From: Robert Watson <rwatson@FreeBSD.org> To: Julian Elischer <julian@elischer.org> Cc: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org, Carl Shapiro <carl.shapiro@gmail.com> Subject: Re: binary compatibility query Message-ID: <20080510134833.J63808@fledge.watson.org> In-Reply-To: <481F6990.9010007@elischer.org> References: <4dcb5abd0805050540m292b319aw52aa2cb8ba018e12@mail.gmail.com> <481F0DB3.9070505@FreeBSD.org> <481F48EE.3050806@elischer.org> <481F4EED.2030300@FreeBSD.org> <4dcb5abd0805051132o77d68e36u3f0ad38630a02afd@mail.gmail.com> <481F6990.9010007@elischer.org>
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On Mon, 5 May 2008, Julian Elischer wrote: > basically if you rely only on the standard posix interfaces and don't do > anything exotic then you will "probably" be safe. > > the really safe way of course it to make a 6.0 chroot on your machine and > compile your app there. For "raw" UNIX applications, this rule of thumb works well, but not for applications that depend on third-party libraries, languages, or daemons. For example, Java binaries built against 6.0 using packages shipped with 6.0 can't run on 6.1 due to incompatible changes in third-party libraries it depends on. While we try to be pretty careful with the base system, we have no control over third party applications, and as far as I know, we perform no testing (nor even have policies) for addressing that sort of incompatibility. The safety of depending on those third-party libraries pretty much corresponds to the carefulness of the thirdy-party library authors and their attention to those same sorts of details. Robert N M Watson Computer Laboratory University of Cambridge
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