From owner-freebsd-current@FreeBSD.ORG Wed Sep 29 12:31:02 2004 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-current@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 9D27516A4CE; Wed, 29 Sep 2004 12:31:02 +0000 (GMT) Received: from electra.cse.Buffalo.EDU (electra.cse.Buffalo.EDU [128.205.32.2]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 14BBC43D3F; Wed, 29 Sep 2004 12:31:02 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from kensmith@cse.Buffalo.EDU) Received: from electra.cse.Buffalo.EDU (localhost [127.0.0.1]) i8TCV1TH001191; Wed, 29 Sep 2004 08:31:01 -0400 (EDT) Received: (from kensmith@localhost) by electra.cse.Buffalo.EDU (8.12.10/8.12.9/Submit) id i8TCV0lM001190; Wed, 29 Sep 2004 08:31:00 -0400 (EDT) Date: Wed, 29 Sep 2004 08:31:00 -0400 From: Ken Smith To: Tim Robbins Message-ID: <20040929123100.GA600@electra.cse.Buffalo.EDU> References: <20040929030546.GE16305@electra.cse.Buffalo.EDU> <20040929092710.GA59303@cat.robbins.dropbear.id.au> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <20040929092710.GA59303@cat.robbins.dropbear.id.au> User-Agent: Mutt/1.4.1i cc: Ken Smith cc: freebsd-current@freebsd.org Subject: Re: HEADS-UP: Library version number bumps X-BeenThere: freebsd-current@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.1 Precedence: list List-Id: Discussions about the use of FreeBSD-current List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Wed, 29 Sep 2004 12:31:02 -0000 On Wed, Sep 29, 2004 at 07:27:10PM +1000, Tim Robbins wrote: > On Tue, Sep 28, 2004 at 11:05:46PM -0400, Ken Smith wrote: > > > > >From the "Better late than never" Department... > > > > It looks like we should probably bump the version of a couple of > > the system libraries. With LOTS of help from Kris it looks like > > this is the list we think needs a version bump, with the version > > from 4.X being placed in compat4x: > > > > libgnuregex.so.2 > > libhistory.so.4 > > libm.so.2 > > libncurses.so.5 > > libopie.so.2 > > libpcap.so.2 > > libreadline.so.4 > > libwrap.so.3 > > > > The bumps will be coming soon... > > Why do they need to be bumped? Why use the version from 4.x? It sounds like > this will break a lot of 5.x binaries. > They need to be bumped because the internal workings of the libraries have changed in such a way that a 4.X executable will either be un-dynamically-linkable, will fail ungracefully (seg-fault, etc), or (worse) run but it makes assumptions that are no longer valid thus producing incorrect results. By putting the older versions of the libraries in the compat directory the dynamic linker will find and link to those instead when starting the executable and since we will have taken them from a 4.X system the executable should run just fine. Normally development cycles are "much more sane" (Scott's usual phrasing for it :-) so at least in theory they're much shorter, and we don't usually have as many "end-user-type-people" using a development branch as we have now with the 5.X series. So the fact we do this sort of thing hasn't been a huge issue before - the developers should know how to cope with it. You're right - there can be 5.X based binaries that will have problems. At this point we need to decide which old executables break and we're opting to break the 5.X executables - at least those users had a little bit of a warning they were using a not-for-production-use system. We're not particularly happy about needing to do this. -- Ken Smith - From there to here, from here to | kensmith@cse.buffalo.edu there, funny things are everywhere. | - Theodore Geisel |