On Sat, Aug 17, 2002 at 13:27:24 +0100, Richard Kettlewell wrote: > This is not how Debian has done similar transitions in the past: libc4 to > libc5, and libc5 to libc6, did not cause this breakage in Debian. Old > programs continued to work without user or operator intervention (in fact > libc4 binaries still work _today_ on some Debian systems.)
In some sense, the problem with the gcc 3.2 transition is that is is not radical enough a change; thus the breakage it can cause is rather subtle. libc4 -> libc5 was much more than a simple ABI change: it involved both API changes (dropping/deprecating support for a lot of non-portable constructs then in common use requiring e.g. compiling -DDIRENT_ILLEGAL_ACCESS) and a a change of executable format (a.out -> ELF; big changes in how shared libraries were built etc.). Ray -- We do not worry about Microsoft developing Open Source applications. Their revenue stream is based on a heroin addiction of selling ever more software. Red Hat's Bob Young quoted in http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/1/11321.html