Re: Slink to potato upgrade
"Edward John M. Brocklesby" <ejb@klamath.demon.co.uk> writes:
> As I see it, the two kinds of programs that break with the new glibc are a)
> programs that are binary only, and cannot be fixed to use the new ways of
> doing things (eg jdk), and b) programs that are free, but cannot/have not b=
> een
> modified to do things 'correctly' (eg libtricks).
>
> The problem of users compiling their own programs does not affect the first,
> obviously. The second, these programs will either work, or won't work. I do=
> n't
> see that where they are compiled makes a difference.
No. If a program *needs* to be compiled in order to work with the new
libraries, then the new libraries are not truly compatible with the
old libraries, and the libraries need a new soname.
When a user upgrades to a new release of Debian, working programs
should not break. Programs should not require recompilation. Our
upgrade from libc5 to libc6 was fairly smooth because we had separate
soname.
Our job is to decide whether we need a new soname, then strongly
encourage other Linux vendors to support our decision. We shouldn't
make a bad decision just to join the crowd.
Of course, if libc2.1 can be fixed, we don't need to worry about this
issue.
--
Kevin Dalley
SETI Institute
kevin@seti.org
Reply to: