GNU/Linux binary compatibility (Was: Re: memory_object_lock_request and memory_object_data_return fnord)

[Jeroen Dekkers]

On Mon, Mar 25, 2002 at 01:54:42AM -0500, Roland McGrath wrote:
> And even if you hack all the header files, there's still inlined versions
> from things compiled for GNU/Linux one day when we have binary compatibility.

I doubt if binary compatibility with GNU/Linux is a good thing to
have. It looks like we are then bound to the ABI and can't change it
if we want to keep compatibility. There are also other problems, for
example a program compiled on GNU/Linux could happily use PATH_MAX but
that would cause a buffer overflow on GNU/Hurd. Also programs on
GNU/Linux can use the /proc filesystem and can't on GNU/Hurd. There
are probably more issues.

Jeroen Dekkers
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