Glenn Fowler writes:
> On Wed, 21 Feb 2007 10:05:10 -0500 James Carlson wrote:
> > Binary incompatibility for _what_?
>
> at time (t) I post solaris sparc binaries for say, ksh
> at time (t+1) the solaris implementation relase changes
> and posted binaries no longer work for the new release
> worse, binaries built to (t+1) dont work for (t)
> so the binaries I post split to pre-(t) and post-(t)
I'm still confused about the incompatibility that's of concern here.
Is it a future incompatibility in Solaris? If so, then sticking to
the documented stable (or standard) interfaces fixes that problem.
Is it a possible incompatible change in the ksh implementation and/or
libraries? If so, then the Solaris minor version number just has
nothing to do with the problem. There's no guarantee that a change of
minor number will mean a change in ksh or vice-versa.
Either way, I don't see how a minor release number can be of help
here.
> > If that incompatibility is in the
> > system itself, then I strongly object to using Solaris minor release
> > numbers here. It makes no sense at all.
>
> > If you must use a number here, then use the major number ('5').
>
> hey, in this instance I'm just an outside hacker attempting to deal
> with a real problem among N implementations, one of which is solaris
>
> if some standard (defacto or otherwise) consistent with all implementations
> had addressed this issue I would have been more than happy to use it
>
> the spellings of HOSTTYPE evolve with empirical evidence for each
> implementation
> for solaris there exists some (I) where sol(I).* binaries are/were
> incompatible
> with sol(I+1) (I dont recall the (I) exactly, but 6 comes to mind)
If any such things can be shown to exist, and they're not just related
to bad coding (such as using undocumented or unstable interfaces),
then I think we'd very much like to know about them. We intentionally
guarantee otherwise:
http://www.sun.com/software/solaris/guarantee.jsp
... and it seems to me that coding defensively against things that are
presumably bugs in the OS doesn't make sense when one is actually
delivered as part of the OS itself.
--
James Carlson, Solaris Networking <james.d.carlson at sun.com>
Sun Microsystems / 1 Network Drive 71.232W Vox +1 781 442 2084
MS UBUR02-212 / Burlington MA 01803-2757 42.496N Fax +1 781 442 1677
