Re: glibc compatibility
>
> Hi debian-user readers,
>
> I'm running testing, which I believe is based on glibc2.2. Is this
> backwards compatible with glibc2.1? If a program says it requires 2.1,
> should I expect that it will work?
most of the time..sometimes it wont..depends how the program
was coded, and compiled i recently copied some self compiled
binaries i made on a debian 2.1 system to a 2.2 system and
they work great. debian 2.1 is based on glibc 2.0, while debian
2.2 runs glibc 2.1
> If not, is there anything I can do? I notice that there is a libc5
> package, to support older apps built against libc 5. Does anything
> similar exist for minor versions?
things may of changed since i last compiled libc on my own,
which was back in 1997 or 98. but at least then you could only
have 2 libcs installed, one primary/master one secondary/slave.
it may be possible to have both glibc 2.1 and 2.2 installed
but it may mean not being able to have libc5 installed, and at
the same time you'd have to install glibc2.1 manually, which
isn't so easy to do. and you may hose your system in the process
so if you attempted it be sure to back up first.
>
> More generally, if I have multiple libc versions installed, how does
> the system know which one it should be calling from any given app? (I
> realize that this is probably a fairly big question; a pointer to a
> web reference would be appreciated if its easier than answering.)
it may be more difficult/impossible with minor libcs but with
major ones, the programs call libc.so.6 or libc.so.5, and the
system (provided its configured correctly) automatically
directs the program to the right library. this configuration
is handled automatically in debian when having libc5/6 installed
at the same time.
nate
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