[1831] in NetBSD-Development
Re: Netscape-3.01
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Erik Nygren)
Wed Jan 27 15:21:38 1999
To: "t. belton" <tbelton@MIT.EDU>
Cc: John Hawkinson <jhawk@MIT.EDU>, gisele@MIT.EDU, linux-dev@MIT.EDU,
netbsd-dev@MIT.EDU, cwis-dev@MIT.EDU
In-Reply-To: Your message of "Wed, 27 Jan 1999 11:49:13 EST."
<Pine.GSO.3.96L.990127113846.6775A-100000@department-of-alchemy.mit.edu>
Date: Wed, 27 Jan 1999 15:21:20 EST
From: Erik Nygren <nygren@MIT.EDU>
> Anyway - I have a linux1 directory and a linux2. What's the difference? Is
> there another flavor of Linux I should know about? I have only one netbsd
> directory. Is there another flavor of that? These are the sorts of
> questions I was talking about.
Since the standard sets of system libraries and the binary object
file format tends to be the key factor for compatability, this is
what the N of i386_linuxN refers to.
Unlike cluster machines, there tend to be Linux machines running old
distributions that are around for quite some time. I haven't been
quite convinced how long we should support older distributions for,
but we should support them for at least two years after a new
distribution has been made available. (People shouldn't have to
reinstall their machines every few months, and we have unfortunately
tended not to have clean upgrade paths between major distribution
changes). When a platform is desupported, it should be done
slowly and during non-critical times. (For example, desupporting
someone's machine during thesis crunch time or while they're
working on a final project can really suck).
i386_linux1 uses a.out format binaries and libc4.
I'm sure there are still a few machines using this,
but it's probably time to start phasing it out.
i386_linux2 uses ELF format binaries and libc5.
The vast majority of Linux machines on campus are still
using this, so we'll probably be stuck supporting
(or at least not explicitly desupporting)
this for the next two years or so.
(Packages that work with this on Netscape's ftp site
are often described as for "libc5" or "redhat4").
i386_linux3 uses ELF format binaries and libc6 (aka "glibc2").
This will be used by RedHat Linux-Athena 5.2 which
we hope to release in a few weeks. A number of machines
are already running it to try and get problems resolved
before we release it.
(Packages that work with this on Netscape's web site
are often described as for "glibc2" or "libc6" or
"redhat5" or just glibc).
For the time being, i386_linux3 can be a symlink to i386_linux2 as
long as libc5 binaries are installed there (since backwards
compatability exists). Mail has been sent out to
locker-maintainers@mit.edu a number of times explaining this
situation.
Creating the i386_linux3 -> i386_linux2 symlink in infoagents
for the time being would be greatly appreciated.
Erik
