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Path: sserve!newshost.anu.edu.au!munnari.oz.au!yoyo.aarnet.edu.au!news.adelaide.edu.au!news.cs.su.oz.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!yeshua.marcam.com!MathWorks.Com!europa.eng.gtefsd.com!howland.reston.ans.net!newsserver.jvnc.net!igor.rutgers.edu!geneva.rutgers.edu!hedrick From: hedrick@geneva.rutgers.edu (Charles Hedrick) Newsgroups: comp.os.386bsd.questions Subject: Re: WP for Linux, BSD? Message-ID: <Mar.13.15.59.41.1994.1248@geneva.rutgers.edu> Date: 13 Mar 94 20:59:42 GMT References: <1994Mar9.082547.1022@news.csuohio.edu> <2llhqt$15a@explorer.clark.net> <hastyCMFH9r.BvD@netcom.com> <1994Mar11.204055.24136@pegasus.com> Organization: Rutgers Univ., New Brunswick, N.J. Lines: 34 richard@pegasus.com (Richard Foulk) writes: >Can a vendor expect today's binaries to remain compatible with future >releases of these OSes? On Linux (I can't comment on others), it depends upon the nature of the product. Straightforward applications should not be an issue. As usual, it's possible for programs to read files directly rather than going through library routines, and things like device drivers or other low-level tools are less likely to be unchanged. Things like word processors or spreadsheets should be OK (or as OK as on any Unix -- I'm thinking that when X11R6 comes out, X-based products will probably want to do a new release). A number of my Linux programs are from early 1993 (including emacs), or early 1992. An old version of ar from Sept 1991 still works. And I've got the newest kernel and next to newest libc. The people doing Linux libc have been very careful to provide upward compatibility. The main problems have been areas where the original implementation was incomplete. E.g. sometime in 1992 programs that opened directories and read them as files had to be changed to use the normal POSIX directory-reading facilities. Otherwise support of multiple filesystem types would be impossible. I believe there have been similar incompatible changes in a couple of other areas. But I don't think you'll see many more of those. In a couple of cases the kernel or libc have started catching errors that had gone undetected previously. I'd hope that major commercial software would already have been put on enough platforms that it wouldn't have that sort of error, but anything is possible. I think it would be foolish to claim that supporting Linux would require no effort at all. But I don't think it would be any worse than any other Unix.