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Date: Sat, 15 Feb 2003 21:17:06 -0500
From: Christopher Faylor <cgf AT redhat DOT com>
To: cygwin AT cygwin DOT com
Subject: Re: forward incompatibility?
Message-ID: <20030216021706.GC13451@redhat.com>
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References: <3E4EF1EB DOT 3090807 AT ece DOT gatech DOT edu>
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On Sat, Feb 15, 2003 at 09:05:31PM -0500, Charles Wilson wrote:
>patch-2.5.8-3 requires the new symbol strerror_r, which is not provided 
>by cygwin-1.3.19; it was added in 1.3.20.  Therefore, if you've updated 
>'patch' but not 'cygwin', you get a missing symbol popup.
>
>I'm not complaining; this is not abnormal behavior.  We guarantee 
>backward compatibility, not forward -- and this is a *forward* 
>compatibility issue.  I just don't remember a warning in the 
>patch-2.5.8-3 announcement that upgrading patch *requires* upgrading cygwin.
>
>Not that I check forward compatibility, every time I release a new 
>package, either...

Yeah, it's never clear how you are going to break behavior with older
dlls when you add a new symbol.

That's one of the reasons why I have resisted, slightly, the steady
encroachment of newlib functions into cygwin.din.  Every time we do that
we guarantee a "I'm getting this completely inexplicable error message
about a missing symbol.  Whatsoever could be the problem?" message here
when someone tries to use a newer program with an older DLL.

With my recent changes, I guaranteed a *whole lot* of these messages, in
fact.  Get ready.

cgf

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