cvs commit: src/sys/compat/linux linux_socket.c

[Maxim Sobolev]

Dag-Erling Smørgrav wrote:
> Maxim Sobolev <sobomax at portaone.com> writes:
> 
>>As I have said the binary program compiled on the newer system that
>>uses this flag in some cases may malfunction when executed on system
>>with older kernel due to the fact that that additional flag will
>>become no-op the program might get SIGPIPE unexpectedly.
> 
> 
> We've never cared about running newer binaries on older systems.  It's
> the reverse that matters, and the change Alfred suggests does not
> break that.

Even if we've never cared about that it really matters and IMHO we need 
to start caring about that esp. considering that sendto(2) and friends 
are very popular syscalls. That's not a big problem if you have sources 
handy, but what if it's some third party tool which is only available in 
binary code?

Imagine that we are talking about some very big and very popular toolkit 
such as for example JDK, which takes ages to go through all compliance 
testing and such. Once it's packed, tested and rubberstamped for 
distribution you have zero chance to convince vendor to release another 
version that will run on both new and older systems even if it will mean 
changing two or three lines of their code. The only thing the vendor can 
do is to put some warning "will work correctly only  starting from 
release X.Y", therefore forcing all users who run releases X.Z, Z < Y, 
and need this tool to upgrade otherwise perfectly working system(s).

-Maxim