Re: Slink to potato upgrade
On 21-Mar-99 Kevin Dalley wrote:
> 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.
No program *needs* to be compiled to work with the new libraries. Programs
compiled against glibc2.0 can work with libraries compiled against glibc2.1,
this is not an issue.
> 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.
The vast, vast majority of programs that break are those that are poorly
written and make use of internal libc symbols. Even so, I just use something to
the effect of this to make StarOffice work:
LD_LIBRARY=/data/Office50/lib /data/Office50/lib/ld-linux.so.2 \
/data/Office50/bin/soffice.bin
It quite happily uses the glibc2.0.7 that's installed into /data/Office50/lib
> 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.
It is the job of the upstream authors to decide this. They obviously didn't
feel bumping up the soname was required. Debian shouldn't second guess them.
Isaac
yet another on-topic post by a non-developer
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