[OpenIndiana-discuss] use cases of Sun Studio-compiled C++ libraries on OI

[Alan Coopersmith]

On 12/ 7/14 02:50 PM, James Carlson wrote:
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> On 12/7/2014 5:26 PM, Alex Smith (K4RNT) wrote:
>> Wouldn't this break the binary compatibility guarantee that Solaris
>> had been traditionally marketed on?
>>
>> I'm no kernel engineer, so I wouldn't know.
>
> No.  The guarantee has always been that *IF* your application complies
> strictly with the ABI *THEN* it won't be broken on future releases
> without adequate notice.
>
> This doesn't in any way guarantee that you can produce such an
> application in the first place by linking together arbitrary (and
> incompatible) objects.
>
> Producing an ABI compliant application can be a difficult job,
> particularly if you choose to work in a hostile environment such as C++.

Right - the binary compatibility guaranteed is with previous versions
of the OS, not arbitrary compilation options.

Similarly you can't link 32-bit & 64-bit C code together, nor SPARC &
i386 - they're all binary incompatible with each other.

As to whether OpenIndiana cares about Sun's marketing programs is a
completely different question - maintaining binary compatibility can
be a lot of work, and OI's clearly not overflowing with excess
developers with oodles of spare time to offer.

	-alan-