Re: [gtk-list] shared lib binary compatibility? (fwd)

[Owen Taylor <owt1 cornell edu>]

Ray Lehtiniemi <ray.lehtiniemi@crosskeys.com> writes:

> i sent this a few days back, but it didn;t seem to hit the archive at 
> redhat, so i'm resending....
> 
> it appears that the gtk+-970828 interface isn't binary compatible with the
> one distributed with gimp-0.99.pre11.  the size of GdkEvent has changed,
> so a gimp compiled against the pre11 gtk+ won;t run against the 970828
> shared libs.
> 
> it's not a problem to recompile everything of course, but it would be nice
> to just update the shared libs.  is the interface stable enough to expect
> this to work, or will i have to recompile gimp against each new gtk+
> snapshot? 

I think you shouldn't need to recompile from gtk+970828 to gtk+970916.
At least, an old binary of the GIMP I have around seems to work
without obvious problems. I suppose Peter will eventually start to put
real version numbers on the libraries, but just changing the minor
versions doesn't help with binary incompatibility, and I think we'd be
at about libgtk.so.7.2.1 now if major numbers had been changed every
time binary compatibility was broken in early development.

I personally don't have any plans to break binary compatibility again
in the near future (I was the culprit with gtk+970828 and GdkEvent)
but I doubt the interface has _completely_ stabilized. Your best bet
may be to try not recompiling, and if you get errors, recompile.

Regards,
                                        Owen