Re: libc?

[Christopher C Chimelis <chris@classnet.med.miami.edu>]

On 3 Nov 1998, John Goerzen wrote:

> OK, I'm confused.  Our package is libc6.1, implying glibc2.1.  Before
> I used Alpha myself, I received a couple of bug reports on my
> packages, regarding problems with glibc2.1 on Alpha.
> 
> However, changelog says that it is glibc2.0.7u.  The version also says 
> so.  Why then is the package libc6.1?

It's a super long story, but to keep it short...

"libc6", as it was known on the Alpha, was actually a snapshot of the
then-prerelease glibc 2.0.  Since libc5 had ZERO support for Alphas and
since experience and patches could be gathered from RedHat's Alpha
distribution (then, also using glibc 1.99 snapshots), it was decided to
make that "libc6".  After awhile, glibc 2.0 finally came out officially
and Debian started moving on it.  Since ALOT of things changed between the
snapshots and the release glibc, the libc6 package had to be renamed since
stuff compiled under glibc snapshots was not guaranteed to be functional
at all (thereby needing a new dependency on the new libc package), so it
was named libc6.1.

That's pretty much it.  As for implications...sorry, but that was the best
decision that could be made at the time.  At some point in the past, I
suppose we could've reverted back to libc6 (since all previously compiled
packages have been replaced now), but history is history and we let it
stand as such.

C