Re: Request for Compiler Independent Extern "C" APIs...

[Ari Heitner]

On Fri, Jan 26, 2001 at 11:31:32AM -0500, Pierre Phaneuf wrote:

> PNG has something similar. It pretty much amazed me when I installed an
> RPM package of gif2png on my computer, which ran properly (the ELF
> soname for libpng was compatible), but complained that the older libpng
> I had did not support a specific feature I was trying to use (gamma
> compensation or somesuch), and worked for other cases. Excellent
> versioning, which yielded partial functionality, but better than a
> dialog box saying something like "DINPUT.DLL not found" or ld.so
> complaining that it can't launch an application because of missing
> libraries.
> 

Speaking as a unix hacker ...

Correct versioning on library names (which MS has *never* had) is what
supposed to prevent this on unix. And it's a system that's worked pretty
well.

Anytime that fails (i.e. the so major version number doesn't indicate
compability) the authors should be shot. But interfaces can break with a
component system too (correct versioning is policy, not mechanism ...).



ari