binary compatibility query

[Robert Watson]

On Mon, 5 May 2008, Julian Elischer wrote:

> basically if you rely only on the standard posix interfaces and don't do 
> anything exotic then you will "probably" be safe.
>
> the really safe way of course it to make a 6.0 chroot on your machine and 
> compile your app there.

For "raw" UNIX applications, this rule of thumb works well, but not for 
applications that depend on third-party libraries, languages, or daemons. 
For example, Java binaries built against 6.0 using packages shipped with 6.0 
can't run on 6.1 due to incompatible changes in third-party libraries it 
depends on.  While we try to be pretty careful with the base system, we have 
no control over third party applications, and as far as I know, we perform no 
testing (nor even have policies) for addressing that sort of incompatibility. 
The safety of depending on those third-party libraries pretty much corresponds 
to the carefulness of the thirdy-party library authors and their attention to 
those same sorts of details.

Robert N M Watson
Computer Laboratory
University of Cambridge