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Path: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au!newshost.carno.net.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!munnari.OZ.AU!news.ecn.uoknor.edu!feed1.news.erols.com!news.bbnplanet.com!cpk-news-hub1.bbnplanet.com!www.nntp.primenet.com!nntp.primenet.com!swrinde!news.uh.edu!bonkers!web.nmti.com!peter 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> NNTP-Posting-Host: sonic.nmti.com 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>