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Date:      Fri, 10 Oct 2008 00:40:46 -0700
From:      Jeremy Chadwick <koitsu@FreeBSD.org>
To:        Shakul M Hameed <smohideen@mx2.labs.rootshell.ws>
Cc:        Drew Tomlinson <drew@mykitchentable.net>, freebsd-questions@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: How To Get libm.so.4?
Message-ID:  <20081010074046.GA25922@icarus.home.lan>
In-Reply-To: <20081010131021.GB1917@freebsdbox>
References:  <48EE6046.8020906@mykitchentable.net> <20081010122613.GA1864@freebsdbox> <20081010071255.GA25451@icarus.home.lan> <20081010131021.GB1917@freebsdbox>

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On Fri, Oct 10, 2008 at 06:40:22PM +0530, Shakul M Hameed wrote:
> I think its not a very bad idea, unless your app is dependent on a routine which is deprecated and
> not avaiable in the latest version of library. For testing purpose this should be ok. 

I disagree.  It _is_ a bad idea.

There is absolutely *no* guarantee that symbols will be identical
between two revisions of a shared library, especially across a
major revision.  I'm not talking about missing symbols detected during
run-time either; I'm talking about internal changes that could affect
the operation of a program which relies on certain behaviour of
functions in that library, which has changed in a newer version (yet
kept the same function/calling semantics).

And let's not forget about shared libraries that are linked to other
shared libraries, resulting in a dependency tree of madness, where
you'll suddenly find yourself making symlinks all over the place.  (You
should use libmap.conf for this purpose anyway).

So like I said -- it IS a bad idea.  Please do not do it.

-- 
| Jeremy Chadwick                                jdc at parodius.com |
| Parodius Networking                       http://www.parodius.com/ |
| UNIX Systems Administrator                  Mountain View, CA, USA |
| Making life hard for others since 1977.              PGP: 4BD6C0CB |




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