Subject: re: NetBSD 2.0 release date
To: Eric Haszlakiewicz <erh@nimenees.com>
From: matthew green <mrg@eterna.com.au>
List: tech-kern
Date: 12/08/2003 10:21:03
   On Sun, Dec 07, 2003 at 12:06:42PM -0800, Jason Thorpe wrote:
   > Consider this:
   > 	program foo depends on libc.13 and libother.0
   > 
   > 	libother.0 depends on libc.12
   > 
   > *EVEN IF* you have 100% complete inter-library version consistency 
   > checking, you still lose in this situation.  What if foo and libother 
   > both call function zap(), and zap() is one of the things that had an 
   > ABI change between the two libc versions?
   	Well, you'd always lose, but you could lose in a better way.
   1) All newly linked libraries get explicit dependency on libc.
   2) Hack ld.so to consider no libc dependency to mean libc.12.
   	Then you'd get an error when running the program, not later.  Futhermore
   the error would clearly show what the problem was.
   	Isn't that good enough to allow the major number to be bumped?  If not,
   I'm not seeing why not.



it's not good enough because it still breaks old programs.
so what if they fail gracefully - they still *fail*.  until
that is actually _completely required_ why should be do it?


.mrg.