From owner-freebsd-hackers Fri Feb 24 16:04:36 1995 Return-Path: hackers-owner Received: (from majordom@localhost) by freefall.cdrom.com (8.6.9/8.6.6) id QAA29543 for hackers-outgoing; Fri, 24 Feb 1995 16:04:36 -0800 Received: from localhost (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by freefall.cdrom.com (8.6.9/8.6.6) with SMTP id QAA29528; Fri, 24 Feb 1995 16:04:34 -0800 X-Authentication-Warning: freefall.cdrom.com: Host localhost didn't use HELO protocol To: richard@cogsci.edinburgh.ac.uk cc: freebsd-hackers@freefall.cdrom.com Subject: Re: Binary compatibility with NetBSD In-reply-to: Your message of "Fri, 24 Feb 95 14:51:56 GMT." <20708.9502241451@macbeth.cogsci.ed.ac.uk> Date: Fri, 24 Feb 1995 16:04:29 -0800 Message-ID: <29525.793670669@freefall.cdrom.com> From: "Jordan K. Hubbard" Sender: hackers-owner@FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk > The problem of course is shared libraries. As far as I know, at the > system call level the systems are almost completely compatible (and if > they aren't, they should be). But there's nothing official to > distinguish whether a program uses FreeBSD or NetBSD shared libraries. I spent a little time talking about this with Mike Karels (BSDI) and Chris Demetriou (NetBSD). The conclusion was that shared library compatability was a false grail and should not be pursued. It's hard, it's easily broken (meaning you get stuck in this thankless loop of fixing it over and over again as the libraries themselvse change) and in the case of BSDI, a rather difficult target to hit anyway (they will have an entirely different shared lib strategy). I know it would be useful and make the users happy, but neither I nor anybody else I know is willing to sign up for the work involved so it's just better to assume it isn't going to happen. Jordan