OSNews > Thread > "Solaris?" by trembovetski

On the Importance of Backward Compatibility

Linked by Thom Holwerda on Mon 15th Jan 2007 11:25 UTC

Ian Murdock blogs about the importance of backward compatibility. "Yes, it's hard, particularly in the Linux world, because there are thousands of developers building the components that make up the platform, and it just takes one to break compatibility and make our lives difficult. Even worse, the idea of keeping extraneous stuff around for the long term 'just' for the sake of compatibility is anathema to most engineers. Elegance of design is a much higher calling than the pedestrian task of making sure things don't break. Why is backward compatibility important?"

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Solaris?

by trembovetski on Mon 15th Jan 2007 23:42 UTC in reply to "disagree"

Member since:
2006-09-30

I guess you would be surprised then that one of the most advanced and innovative OS around - Solaris, has Binary Application Guarantee - http://www.sun.com/software/solaris/guarantee.jsp

Dmitri

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RE: Solaris?

by mmu_man on Tue 16th Jan 2007 13:36 in reply to "Solaris?"

Member since:
2006-09-30

BeOS too cares about binary compatibility, R4 applications can still run on R6.1 (Zeta)...
careful library handling makes most of it.

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