re: glibc vs BSD libc
To David Brownlee: I doubt NetBSD 1.0 binary could run against
a NetBSD 1.6 libc. They don't care much about binary compatibility. You
could not even run a statically linked 1.0 app without some COMPAT_
option in the kernel, I think.
when making such assertions it helps to be actually correct. while it
is true that *any* old binary may require COMPAT_XX options in the kernel,
netbsd supports binaries back to 386bsd for i386, with shorter periods
of backwards compat for the newer plaforms. i have personally run 386bsd
binaries on netbsd 1.5/i386. i just downloaded the netbsd/sparc 1.0
/bin/sh and:
russsian-intervention ~> uname -a
NetBSD russian-intervention.eterna.com.au 1.6M NetBSD 1.6M (_russian_) #719: Sun Jan 19 00:15:13 EST 2003 mrg@what-time-is-love.eterna.com.au:/var/_russian_ sparc
russian-intervention ~> file ./sh-sparc-1.0
./sh-sparc-1.0: NetBSD/sparc demand paged executable
russian-intervention ~> ./sh-sparc-1.0
$ ps
PID TT STAT TIME COMMAND
229 p0 Ss+ 0:04.48 -tcsh
284 p1 Ss 0:02.16 -tcsh
327 p1 TN 178:29.44 systat -w1 vm
14305 p1 S 0:00.07 ./sh-sparc-1.0
14308 p1 R+ 0:00.06 ps
17424 p2 IWs 0:02.76 -tcsh
22292 p2 SN+ 12:38.86 top
ie, that is a netbsd/sparc machine running a kernel that is only a few
days old, and it happily runs the 1.0 /bin/sh. (this is a SMP kernel
with the new netbsd kernel-based userthreads implementation as well.)
i can not test a dynamic program from 1.0 because i don't have the
a.out libraries installed currently and i'm not bandwidth-connected
right now to download them... (took long enough for /bin/sh to
download!) however, i have in the fairly recent past (in the last
year or so) run very old a.out dynamic sparc binaries on each of:
- 32 bit sparc
- 32 bit sparc64
- 64 bit sparc64 with 32 bit binary support
when i was testing that the emulations work as LKM's.
i think you will find that netbsd cares _a whole lot_ about binary
compatibility. to claim otherwise is simply fallacy.
.mrg.
Reply to: