* On 2016-03-16 at 12:06 GMT, Fred Liu wrote:

> Hi,

Please start a new thread rather than changing the subject on an
existing one, otherwise you break email threading.

Please also avoid cross-posting to multiple lists.  In this case as
the questions are specific to SmartOS there is no need for all of the
illumos developers to be involved.

> Not sure if illumos is design strictly by backward compatibility.
> That means applications built on older illumos  can still run on
> newer illumos.  For there has been short history of smartos, the
> older OS images can still run well in the current SmartOS release.
> But in long-term, will the users be asked to upgrade their images?

The only requirement we have so far is that 14.4.x and newer images
must be running on a platform of at least joyent_20141030T081701Z, as
that is the platform they are built on.

If in the future we move to a newer platform for the builds, we will
notify users of this change in the release notes, and ensure that the
min_platform requirement is bumped so that it should be impossible to
provision on an incompatible platform anyway.

As for the reverse, no.  There is no need to upgrade images when you
upgrade platform, and at no point should backwards incompatible
changes be introduced which stops older images from working.  A good
example of this was the recent OpenSSH work, which thanks to great
work from Alex was carefully considered to ensure compatibility with
legacy images.

You are of course encouraged to keep track with the newer images
though, as they will continue to be improved and contain all of the
latest security updates and bug fixes.

-- 
Jonathan Perkin  -  Joyent, Inc.  -  www.joyent.com


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