Re: Why Gnome RPMS need to work with RH 5.2

[Eric Kidd <eric kidd pobox com>]

On Tue, Apr 06, 1999 at 11:23:23AM -0400, Owen Taylor wrote:
> Not true. As has been explained a couple of times here before, these
> RPM's are linked against glibc2.0. However, they are compiled against
> egcs. (The version of egcs shipped with 5.2, in fact)

My mistake. I stand corrected. I had only checked the most recent threads
on the subject.

> The consequence of the second thing is that you can't use those libraries
> with applications compiled with gcc, so if you want to compile other
> GNOME applications against these libraries, you'll temporarily have to
> make egcs your default compiler.

Argh! Do people just sit around *inventing* new ways to lose? Somebody's
broken binary compatibility *again*, and this time, soname's don't help?
This is really horrible. Words fail me.

Where can I find a detailed technical description of this issue? I've got to
help two open-source projects work around this mess before people start
shipping egcs as their default compiler.

And what happens if you compile glibc with egcs, by the way? Do all your
GCC-compiled applications suddenly stop working?

> The other potential problem is that there were at one point
> briefly other RPM's on the site (not from the Labs) compiled 
> with gcc; if you have a mixed set, you may have difficulties
> that you can solve by upgrading the entire set with:

Gotcha. Please be exceptionally careful with Gtk+ 1.2; many of us have
GCC-compiled applications on our system which link against it. Breaking
these is simply *not* an option.

Cheers,
Eric