Is the FreeBSD ABI compatibility policy documented anywhere

[Alex Goncharov]

,--- You/Kostik (Sat, 10 Oct 2009 21:20:48 +0300) ----*
| > A CMUCL binary built on a pre-7.1 (?) release of FreeBSD, will crash
| > almost immediately when run on 7.1 (well, "if memory serves").
| 
| This has been an issue for 7.0, and it was explicitely handled, see r174254.

I know it was (I was the one who first ran into the problem, way back
then).

My point here was to state that the behavior on signals is almost as
important as symbols' compatibility.

As for "it was", see this few-days-old thread:

  http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.lisp/browse_thread/thread/287d1a57226f0cda/a6805cf10ca0cab9?q=cmucl&lnk=nl&

  I found an even easier way to crash CMUCL 19c/19f on FreeBSD 7.1

where the last message was posted today.  Although most messages there
are totally unrelated to CMUCL, FreeBSD (in fact, almost anything
relevant), somebody, somewhere still hit the issue a few days ago (I
am not inclined to analyze his environment, frankly).

The question, "Will a FreeBSD 7.2 (e.g.) build run all right on
FreeBSD 8.0 (e.g.)?", is often asked, and I think it is impossible to
give any guarantees -- the best one can realistically say, is,
"probably" (with compatibility libraries, in some case).

At least, I don't give any assurances for the binaries I upload to
http://common-lisp.net/project/cmucl/downloads: I build against the
latest code on a few branches of FreeBSD (RELENG and CURRENT) -- and
if a 7.2 build runs for you on 7.1 and/or 8.0, you are in luck (and I
do expect this), but it may not, and who will tell you it will, without
trying?

-- Alex -- alex-goncharov at comcast.net --