On Wed, Apr 05, 2000 at 09:26:42AM +0200, Joerg Schilling wrote:
> BTW: libc.so.6 is still not usable for applications that ship
> in binary form: RedHat and SuSE use binary incompatible libraries
> both called libc.so.6
>
> There is a high demand to force ReaHat and SuSE to talk together
> and fix this. As libc.so.6 is burned out for this reason, there
> should be a libc.so.7 that may be used again for binary distributions.
Joerg,
In glibc binary compatibility is not defined by the soname (which is
libc.so.6 no matter how the actual file is named), but by the internal
symbol versions. In theory a given symbol like fopen@GLIBC_2_1_2 is supposed
to be compatible between Caldera/SuSE/RedHat/Debian/... libc 2.1.x. There is
no explicit testing of this though, it would be rather hard to do too
because the differences can be subtly and maybe often break only some apps.
Changing symbol versions for every small bugfix would be silly too and
quickly cause a big mess.
Often incompatibilities are caused by other things too, like gcc libgcc1/2
binary problems etc.
As you can see, a glibc _up_grade should never break binaries. A downgrade of
course can always cause problems ...
If you compile your binaries / shlibs with glibc-2.1.2, it should work on
all distros using 2.1.2 or later. If not, it's a bug either in glibc or your
code. Don't hesitate to report it to the glibc folks and discuss it.
Regards,
--
Kurt Garloff <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Eindhoven, NL
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SuSE GmbH, Nuernberg, FRG SCSI, Security
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