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

[Gabriel Dos Reis]

Nathan Myers <ncm-nospam@cantrip.org> writes:

| 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.

I posit that the lifecycle of 3.4.x does not worth that effort. 
However, it might be worth preparing for the 3.5.x ABI though.

-- Gaby