From owner-freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Sat May 10 19:26:53 2008 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [IPv6:2001:4f8:fff6::34]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 7361E106564A for ; Sat, 10 May 2008 19:26:53 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from mwm-keyword-freebsdhackers2.e313df@mired.org) Received: from mired.org (five.mired.org [66.92.153.75]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id ED8B78FC17 for ; Sat, 10 May 2008 19:26:52 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from mwm-keyword-freebsdhackers2.e313df@mired.org) Received: (qmail 39337 invoked by uid 1001); 10 May 2008 15:27:19 -0400 Received: from bhuda.mired.org (bhuda [192.168.195.1]) by bhuda (tmda-ofmipd) with ESMTP; Sat, 10 May 2008 15:27:19 -0400 Date: Sat, 10 May 2008 15:27:18 -0400 To: Robert Watson Message-ID: <20080510152718.788d638f@bhuda.mired.org> In-Reply-To: <20080510134833.J63808@fledge.watson.org> References: <4dcb5abd0805050540m292b319aw52aa2cb8ba018e12@mail.gmail.com> <481F0DB3.9070505@FreeBSD.org> <481F48EE.3050806@elischer.org> <481F4EED.2030300@FreeBSD.org> <4dcb5abd0805051132o77d68e36u3f0ad38630a02afd@mail.gmail.com> <481F6990.9010007@elischer.org> <20080510134833.J63808@fledge.watson.org> Organization: Meyer Consulting X-Mailer: Claws Mail 3.4.0 (GTK+ 2.12.9; amd64-portbld-freebsd7.0) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Delivery-Agent: TMDA/1.1.12 (Macallan) From: Mike Meyer Cc: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org, Carl Shapiro , Julian Elischer Subject: Re: binary compatibility query X-BeenThere: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: Technical Discussions relating to FreeBSD List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Sat, 10 May 2008 19:26:53 -0000 On Sat, 10 May 2008 13:50:48 +0100 (BST) Robert Watson wrote: > On Mon, 5 May 2008, Julian Elischer wrote: > > basically if you rely only on the standard posix interfaces and don't do > > anything exotic then you will "probably" be safe. > For "raw" UNIX applications, this rule of thumb works well, but not for > applications that depend on third-party libraries, languages, or daemons. You can lose the dependency on third party libraries by compiling your application to a static binary. That will also help with the few breakages that occur with the system libraries, and with compatibility across major releases using the backwards compatX packages. http://www.mired.org/consulting.html Independent Network/Unix/Perforce consultant, email for more information. O< ascii ribbon campaign - stop html mail - www.asciiribbon.org