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Re: [PATCH] change GLIBC PPC64/ELF2 ABI default to 2.17


On Wed, Jan 29, 2014 at 11:38:20AM -0500, Carlos O'Donell wrote:
> 
> Please note that any distributions that were using GLIBC_2.18 as the
> default ABI baseline will need to rebuild all of userspace for the
> symbol versioning to be correct.

As such a distribution that has thousands of publicly available
binaries built against that ABI, I object quite strongly to this.

I understand the reasons for this, and that for the disribution that
is based on 2.17, it would mean they need to version their symbols
at 2.18 and backport the missing symbols, but I'm not sure that's a
valid reason to force other distributions to rebootstrap and rebuild
the world.

When this came up on the list in November, the "people are already
using these symbol versions" argument was why the "it needs to change
to 2.19" argument fell flat, and it stayed at 2.18.  I'm not sure how
the groups who didn't want to break ABI were relevant then, but have
become irrelevant months later.

> Not withstanding a double-double to IEEE binary128 transition which
> the entire community would like to see happen as double-double is
> very difficult to support and maintain.

This double-double transition rumour is something it would be nice to
nail down as well, especially if it's something we can sort earlier
than later, but it's also not as world-ending an ABI break as changing
the baseline symbol version.

... Adam


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