cvs commit: src/lib/libc/locale utf8.c

[Kris Kennaway]

John Baldwin wrote:
> On Friday 26 October 2007 12:00:54 pm Ken Smith wrote:
>> On Fri, 2007-10-26 at 11:41 -0400, John Baldwin wrote:
>>> On Friday 26 October 2007 10:53:47 am David O'Brien wrote:
>>>> On Thu, Oct 25, 2007 at 05:31:03PM -0400, Ken Smith wrote:
>>>>> What we need to try and avoid unless *absolutely* *necessary* is the
>>>>> part Scott quoted above - binaries compiled on 6.3-REL should work on
>>>>> 6.2-REL unless there was a really big issue and the solution to that
>>>>> issue required us to break that.  The reason is simple, people should be
>>>>> able to continue running 6.2-REL "for a while" and still be able to
>>>>> update their packages from packages-6-stable even after portmgr@ starts
>>>>> using a 6.3-REL base for the builds
>>>> This is news to me.
>>>> I've never heard that we're that concerned with forward compatability
>>>> even on a RELENG branch.  We do not break the ABI for backwards
>>>> compatability - in that everything (including kernel modules) that ran on
>>>> 6.2 must run on 6.3.
>>> Agreed.  The solution to the shared /usr/local problem is to use the oldest 
>>> version for /usr/local.  That has always been the case.  Forwards 
>>> compatiblity (what you are asking for) is significantly harder to guarantee 
>>> since accurately predicting the future isn't much a science.
>>>
>> Yeah, sorry.  I guess I've been a bit grumpy the past couple days and
>> over-stated the "*absolutely* *necessary*" part above.  It should have
>> read "*necessary*", not "*absolutely* *necessary*".
>>
>> I'd just like us to question if it's necessary here.  Is there a good
>> enough way to do this without causing the breakage?  I sorta liked
>> Warren's question.  Does this stuff need to be inlined and if not would
>> that solution avoid the breakage?
> 
> I can agree that in this instance it would be nice to keep RELENG_7 and HEAD
> from diverging too much right now.  I was more concerned about there being a
> new general policy.  Are you really sure you want forwards compat and not
> just backwards compat ABI?

Our users rely on it, namely the ability to run newer packages compiled 
against 6-stable on a 6.2-RELEASE system.  This is not guaranteed to 
always work but should not be broken without extremely good reason.

Kris