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[return to "The state of binary compatibility on Linux and how to address it"]
1. sylwar+p1[view] [source] 2025-04-01 22:38:52
>>generi+(OP)
This article missed a critical point which is "the right way" to select a glibc ABI version: see binutils ld documentation, second part of the page related to VERSION support. This must include glibc internal symbols.

This will allow to craft ELF binaries on a modern distro which will run on "older" distros. This is critical for games and game engines. There is an significant upfront only-once work in order to select an "old" glibc ABI.

The quick and dirty alternative being having a toolchain configured to link with an "old" glibc on the side.

This article missed the -static-libstdc++ critical option for c++ applications (the c++ ABI is hell on earth), but did not miss the -static-libgcc and the dynamic loading of system interface shared libs.

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2. api+R5[view] [source] 2025-04-01 23:16:08
>>sylwar+p1
Is there a reason glibc can't just do a better job at keeping some legacy symbols around? It's not like it's big stuff. They're things like legacy string functions. We're talking a few kilobytes of code in most cases.

The Linux kernel goes to a lot of effort to not break user space, at least for non-exotic core features and syscalls. It seems like a lot of user-space in Linux-land does not make the same effort.

It's particularly bad when it's the C library doing this, since that's at the center of the dependency graph for almost everything.

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3. Conan_+37[view] [source] 2025-04-01 23:28:44
>>api+R5
The legacy symbols are still around. It's just that the linker won't use them by default.
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