Date: Fri, 19 May 1995 22:06:33 -0600 From: Warner Losh <imp@village.org> To: terry@cs.weber.edu (Terry Lambert) Cc: dufault@hda.com (Peter Dufault), hsu@freefall.cdrom.com, chuckr@Glue.umd.edu, hackers@freefall.cdrom.com Subject: Re: (fwd) Re: Mma for Linux, when? Message-ID: <199505200406.WAA05672@rover.village.org> In-Reply-To: Your message of Thu, 18 May 1995 17:26:24 MDT
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: The problem with Free OS ports (Warner Losh should back this) is the : rapid ABI changes obsoleting the port and shortening its viable market : lifetime. Neither a native FreeBSD /NetBSD nor a Linux port would : address this issue. Yes. I've said it several times in the past, but I'll say it again: The Linux port went stale in less than 6 months (and more like 3-4) because the compiler was upgraded and the binaries weren't compatible. Also, there were a number of changes to libc that made it hard to build a new program with the old library. It was a nightmare. However, for ordinary programs, it is much saner, but still fraught with dangers. FreeBSD/NetBSD have been better than Linux about this, btw. The big problem that I had with OI (a library) was that the shared libraries on FreeBSD/NetBSD weren't the same (the ABI was different) and I'd have to do the port twice. The incremental cost wasn't much, but explaining which binary to get and why would be a pain. I don't know if FreeBSD/NetBSD are compatible now with 2.0/1.0, so maybe this is obsolete info. And then OI was purchased by people who are actively hostile toward free software, so nothing happened (or will ever happen now that I've left). Warner
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