*BSD News Article 84311


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From: peter@nmti.com (Peter da Silva)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.solaris,comp.unix.bsd.misc,comp.unix.internals
Subject: Re: Solaris 2.6
Date: 5 Dec 1996 23:38:56 GMT
Organization: Network/development platform support, NMTI
Lines: 27
Distribution: inet
Message-ID: <587meg$h67@web.nmti.com>
References: <32986299.AC7@mail.esrin.esa.it> <580sgh$kpi@panix2.panix.com> <casper.32a40b7b@mail.fwi.uva.nl> <587jrv$9rf@news.parc.xerox.com>
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Xref: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au comp.unix.solaris:91507 comp.unix.bsd.misc:1682 comp.unix.internals:11465

In article <587jrv$9rf@news.parc.xerox.com>,
Keith Edwards <kedwards@parc.xerox.com> wrote:
> As a Sun user at a site with a *lot* of Suns, I can assure the BSD
> people that the binary compatibility issues that Casper raises are
> *extremely* important to us.  Any solution that would require us to
> recompile all of our software, or would not allow us to use existing
> .o's and .a's just because of a minor version OS upgrade would simply
> NOT BE ACCEPTABLE.  

The BSD approach would not require that.

It would require that *new* software that you compile would have to be
linked with new versions of the libraries, *or* compiled with old versions
of the header files and linked with old versions of the libraries, *or*
you would need to have a #define indicating you wanted to compile your code
in a compatibility mode to link with older libraries.

The Sun approach requires a #define to indicate you want to use the *new*
versions of the header files to link with 64-bit libraries.

The BSD approach requires that you use a special flag during a transition
period for an ever decreasing number of programs. The Sun approach requires
that you use a special flag forever, or use one special flag now and another
one if you still want to compile some of those programs after Sun declares
the transition over.
-- 
</peter>