3.3 ABI vs 3.4 ABI (!) vs 3.5 ABI (?)...

[Nathan Myers]

On Mon, Mar 08, 2004 at 07:20:49AM +0100, Michael Matz wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> On Sat, 6 Mar 2004, Andreas Jaeger wrote:
> 
> > I see the problem that we changed the C++ ABI between 3.3 and 3.4 and
> > therefore the C++ library is already ABI incompatible and adding those
> > missing symbols might not help at all.
> 
> While this is true it should only hit us in some corner cases IIRC.  So
> it still would be a good idea to provide the 3.3 API with 3.4 libstdc++
> (as far as possible) IMHO.

No.  There are dozens of differences, in library struct layouts and
corresponding inlines.  The only reasonable hope for stability now is 
to back out (and redo, carefully) all the 3.4->3.5 changes that affect 
ABI, and then announce that 3.4 will be stable for a long time.  That, 
and beg the distros to include the 3.4 libstdc++, and provide libraries
built against it (in parallel with the 3.3 one and libraries built 
against that).  The carrot is that the 3.4 library is a *lot* faster
in many areas.

Nathan Myers
ncm-nospam@cantrip.org