Bug#167409: glibc 2.3.1: breaks XEmacs builds; system breaks on revert to 2.2.5

[Mark Brown <broonie@sirena.org.uk>]

On Sat, Nov 02, 2002 at 03:42:17PM +0900, Stephen J. Turnbull wrote:

> it.  Dammit, for libc, of all packages, it is not acceptable to break
> backward compatibility, even if upstream does!  There always has to be
> the escape hatch of reversion to previous.)  So do all the basic
> system utilities that aptitude upgraded at the same time.

You need to downgrade everything that depends on the new libc before
downgrading libc itself.  dpkg should have told you this when you were
doing the downgrade (IIRC it should have required some explicit
cooercion to do the downgrade).

I don't think any library can reasonably guarantee full backwards as
well as forwards compatibility without using a new soname for every
single ABI change.  Doing this for libc itself would be unreasonable -
it'd be the glibc transition over and over again.

-- 
"You grabbed my hand and we fell into it, like a daydream - or a fever."