Re: Slink to potato upgrade
James LewisMoss <dres@ioa.com> writes:
> >>>>> On 22 Mar 1999 13:20:07 -0500, Greg Stark <gsstark@mit.edu> said:
>
> This is why it's called unstable. Don't use it if it causes you
> problems. We are allowed to break thing in unstable. Everything will
> work again when potato becomes stable.
If everything, including user's programs, eventually works in potato,
then we have done the right thing. If the code in broken programs is
truly abysmal, and not too common, we may be able to get away with
keeping the soname alone. If many packages and users codes are
broken, then we should reconsider the soname decision, even if bad
code is blamed.
> Greg> Maybe someone else can explain what this buys us over updating
> Greg> the soname properly though. Does it provide any level of binary
> Greg> compatibility?
>
> It buys us not having to compile every package again to get rid of the
> older glibc. It buys us a smaller memory footprint because you don't
> have to have two copies of every dynamic lib in memory.
You only need two copies of dynamic libraries if you use both dynamic
libraries. People who are able to avoid using the older dynamic
libraries are free from the extra memory demands. People who are able
to convert, don't need the older dynamic library in memory, and may be
able to avoid having it on their disk. Recompiling every package
takes a bit of work, but not too much. It can be automated with NMU
uploads if necessary. The ftp sites have an increased load, but
otherwise it is not *that* difficult.
--
Kevin Dalley
SETI Institute
kevin@seti.org
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