There are ways around this and it might make sense to distribute your software in a portable way. Years ago "everything" was distributed as source code file with instructions that read "edit the Makefile as required then type "Make install" as root. Then we saw Autotools which could edit the Makefile for you.
But today we use containers to be portable. The lightest weight one is a Linux "appImage" that is like a MacOS app bundle. Both of these get around the problem by including everything you need to run the app in the bundle. Then there are real containers like Docker if you need to distribute a complete environment and not just one app and then even heavier containers like VMs where you distribute the entire OS as an appliance that you can boot on a VM. So it is possible to distribute Linux apps in a manner that is portable across most Linux systems. On Sat, Mar 23, 2019 at 1:39 PM Les Newell <[email protected]> wrote: > Hi Andy, > > > (Which is based on BSD, so a Linux port would be easy, if they chose > > to do it) > > Porting closed source code to Linux is very difficult to do. Windows > and Mac have consistent libraries. I can take a binary that was written > for Win2K and run it on Win10. Conversely I can build a program in Win10 > that will run on Win2K (within certain limits). Linux keeps changing and > binary compatibility is lousy. If I build an application on a current > version of Linux it won't run on a distro that is even a few years > older. An app built on Ubuntu probably won't work properly on Fedora. > There are tricks to mitigate these issues but they all involve lots of > work and don't provide a reliable solution. > > Les > > > _______________________________________________ > Emc-users mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users > -- Chris Albertson Redondo Beach, California _______________________________________________ Emc-users mailing list [email protected] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
