Binary compatibility on Linux

[Russel Winder]

On Sun, 2012-11-11 at 07:19 -0500, Nick Sabalausky wrote:
[…]
> I'm not a Linux expert, but I'm fairly certain the answer is "You
> can't". Linux is very good at a lot of things, but standardization is
> definitely not one of them. Linux is just far too divergent ("herding
> cats" comes to mind) for a widely-compatible binary to be realistic.
> The best that can be done is make a dead-simple-to-use script to grab
> dependencies (isolated from the rest of the system if need be) and
> compile.
[…]

There is only one Linux, well except that they keep evolving it and
changing the version number. Linux is very standardized in that there is
only one. There is no Linux divergence as there was UNIX divergence.

There are many, many, Linux-based distributions. The compilers vary, the
version of Linux varies, the libraries vary, the packaging system
varies. Binary compatibility across all of these is clearly impossible.
This is not a problem, this is the antithesis of problem, as long as you
allow the platform packagers to package or ship source and a build
specification. Hence aptitude, yum, Waf and such stuff.

-- 
Russel.
=============================================================================
Dr Russel Winder      t: +44 20 7585 2200   voip: sip:russel.winder at ekiga.net
41 Buckmaster Road    m: +44 7770 465 077   xmpp: russel at winder.org.uk
London SW11 1EN, UK   w: www.russel.org.uk  skype: russel_winder
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