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Re: Problems with linking older libraries
- To: sidster at elaine dot drink dot com
- Subject: Re: Problems with linking older libraries
- From: "Martin v. Loewis" <martin at mira dot isdn dot cs dot tu-berlin dot de>
- Date: Fri, 7 May 1999 00:37:03 +0200
- CC: alex dot buell at tahallah dot demon dot co dot uk, egcs at egcs dot cygnus dot com
- References: <199905061729.NAA26740@elaine.drink.com>
> Is there a good reason/logic behind breaking binary compatibility
> from version to version?
You don't seem to have much trust into people doing compiler
development. Do you think they break binary compatibility just for the
fun of it?
There are always good reasons for breaking it. Typically, a serious
bug can be only fixed by breaking the ABI. In case of egcs 1.1,
exception handling was not thread-safe in 1.0. In case of egcs 1.2,
the standard template library shipped with egcs 1.1 did not comply
with the standard.
Another reason is that the code might be more efficient if the binary
compatibility can be broken. egcs already contains a number of such
changes, which are not activated yet because they break binary
compatibility.
Regards,
Martin