From owner-freebsd-hackers Fri Feb 24 19:22:09 1995 Return-Path: hackers-owner Received: (from majordom@localhost) by freefall.cdrom.com (8.6.9/8.6.6) id TAA04301 for hackers-outgoing; Fri, 24 Feb 1995 19:22:09 -0800 Received: from Xenon.Stanford.EDU (Xenon.Stanford.EDU [36.28.0.25]) by freefall.cdrom.com (8.6.9/8.6.6) with SMTP id TAA04295 for ; Fri, 24 Feb 1995 19:21:59 -0800 Received: by Xenon.Stanford.EDU (5.61+IDA/25-Xenon-eef) id AA08267; Fri, 24 Feb 95 19:21:20 -0800 Date: Fri, 24 Feb 1995 19:21:20 -0800 (PST) From: Terry Lee To: freebsd-hackers@freefall.cdrom.com Subject: Re: Binary compatibility with NetBSD In-Reply-To: <29525.793670669@freefall.cdrom.com> Message-Id: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII 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. Huh? I'm sorry, but I guess I'm missing something here. I thought that is was a high priority to keep NetBSD and FreeBSD and BSDI as binary compatible as possible. Does this mean that future apps that use the shared libraries will not be binary compatible? If so, what percentage of apps use the shared libraries? Terry _____________________ I n D i G o Terry Lee _____________________ Technical Director i n t e r n e t 745 Stanford Avenue _____________________ Palo Alto, California 94306 d e s i g n 415 424 0747 _____________________ terryl@cs.stanford.edu g r o u p http://www.mall.net/terry _____________________ http://www.mall.net Professional World Wide Web Consultants