Re: Shared lib major number

[Zack Weinberg <zack@rabi.columbia.edu>]

On Wed, 3 Mar 1999 15:12:10 -0800 (PST), Christopher Seawood wrote:
>
>I couldn't find this info in the FAQ or texts I read, but why wasn't the
>major number of the shared libs bumped for the glibc 2.1 release?
>While it's true that most binaries compiled under 2.0 will work under
>2.1, imo, there are enough incompatibilities to warrant bumping the
>release number. 

No.  There are no incompatibilities for C code if you upgrade properly. 
Bumping the major number would cause infinitely more pain for all concerned.
"Properly" means: if you don't care about compiling new binaries, you can
just drop in the new libc.so and sundries.  If you want to compile new
binaries, you must recompile libncurses, libslang, and possibly others.  (No
one has reported any need to recompile other C libraries.)

For C++ the situation is more complex.  libstdc++ must be recompiled for
anything to work.  Some C++ programs must be recompiled to work; the only
one I am aware of is PRCS.  Since C++ tends to break with every compiler
revision anyway, we don't consider this to be a big deal.  If someone cares
to figure out why PRCS breaks and submit a patch for libc or libstdc++, we
will consider it.  I suspect that the problem is PRCS plays with the guts of
libio, which is verboten.

Finally, glibc 2.1 has _NOT_ been withdrawn.  The FSF is not distributing it
because it can't be compiled with gcc 2.8.  You can still get it from
sourceware.cygnus.com and its mirrors.

zw