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Cascading security updatesCascading security updatesPosted Feb 29, 2008 20:14 UTC (Fri) by giraffedata (subscriber, #1954)In reply to: Cascading security updates by nix Parent article: Cascading security updates Symbol versioning actually makes the backward compatibility problem worse. Take an old program foo.c and compile it on your new system. Transport the program to an old system, and it won't run. That's because it calls baz(), which at compile/link time turned into a reference to the new Version 2 of baz(). Without symbol versioning, baz() designers would instead introduce a new baz2(), and maintain compatible header files for baz(), and the old foo.c would be unaffected. Furthermore, a coder of a new foo.c might see in the manual that baz2() is a recent invention, and thus write foo.c to use the more ubiquitous baz(). It's hard to expect a coder to use explicit symbol versions the same way. Last, but not least, the error message you get when you try to run that newly compiled foo.c on the old system is very cryptic, even to a seasoned software engineer.
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