On Thu, 25 Jan 2001 22:00:47 +0100 (MET), Joerg Schilling <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
noted:
> >From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Bill Davidsen)
> > Pity the program was compiled to use a library which hasn't been
> >default in a release this milleniem. And while I know you said linking
>
> It seems that you are missing the important issues:
>
> - libc.so.5 has been standard less than 2 years ago
At the time you built the program you could have said that about a.out
object format. It's not standard now, and while I'm sure there are
issues with it (or any new library), there were lots of problems with
libc.so.5 as well, they just didn't bite you.
> - libc.so.6 has big binary compatibility problems.
> SuSE/RH libc.so.6 definitely had problems up to the mid
> of last year. There have even been problems with
> RH binaries on RH!
I think the word you want is "had" rather than "has," or at least I've
seen no problems with RH/Slackware/SuSE in 6+ months.
> - For the reasons above, I expect that many systems out
> are problematic systems.
I really can't disagree, but it's almost always easier to move forward
and upgrade, rather than move back to configurations which are no longer
standard. People always upgrade, it's been made easy.
> >static doesn't meet some standard, in practice many other application
> >developers manage to make newer libraries work with current libraries
> >and/or static linking.
>
> Let me call it this way:
>
> Other developers don't test for correct behaviour of their programs!
In what way would your program behave incorrectly if you just linked
it static? On Linux, of course, I'm told there is/was a problem on
Solaris. Your software is great, but I don't tend to have multiple
copies running, don't run it hundreds of times a day in scripts, and
generally don't care if it is a bit larger than it needs to be, as long
as it *works* without having to jump through hoops to load libraries or
other inobvious stuff.
If there are problems in your SCSI library, and I assume there are
since you have new versions regularly, you don't tell people to go find
a back version which works right, you fix the problem and tell people to
go forward.
I still think that static linked is the better solution, or a build
agains the latest libc with the probles you saw fixed, and tell people
to upgrade rather than cling to the past.
--
-bill davidsen ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
"The secret to procrastination is to put things off until the
last possible moment - but no longer" -me
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