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SELF: Anatomy of an (alleged) failureSELF: Anatomy of an (alleged) failurePosted Jun 24, 2010 7:35 UTC (Thu) by epa (subscriber, #39769)In reply to: SELF: Anatomy of an (alleged) failure by cmccabe Parent article: SELF: Anatomy of an (alleged) failure
The reason why Apple invented FAT binaries is because they were interested in maintaining extensive binary compatibility with their old systems. Linux has never had this policy.Might this not change? Perhaps one reason Linux has never kept backwards compatibility as well as Apple (or Windows, or Solaris) is because we haven't had the infrastructure and tools to do so easily. A mechanism for fat binaries might be one piece of the puzzle. Be careful not to fall into the classic trap of equating 'my favourite system cannot support X' with 'X is unworkable' or even 'X is morally the wrong thing to do'.
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SELF: Anatomy of an (alleged) failure Posted Jun 25, 2010 3:36 UTC (Fri) by ajf (subscriber, #10844) [Link] Perhaps one reason Linux has never kept backwards compatibility as well as Apple (or Windows, or Solaris) is because we haven't had the infrastructure and tools to do so easily.It's a misunderstanding to say that Apple uses fat binaries because they care about backward compatibility; what they cared about, and implemented fat binaries to support, was cross-platform compatability. (The distinction is that they wanted new software to work with new operating system releases on both old and new hardware; they're less interested in new software working with old operating systems.)
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