Possible Distributions quote of the year

Posted Jan 24, 2025 13:11 UTC (Fri) by bluca (subscriber, #118303)
In reply to: Possible Distributions quote of the year by farnz
Parent article: Distributions quote of the week

Because we are talking about the ecosystem and the standard library, not the language

Possible Distributions quote of the year

Posted Jan 24, 2025 13:16 UTC (Fri) by farnz (subscriber, #17727) [Link] (5 responses)

So what you're saying is that if someone accepts your definitions of what "C" is (after all, the standard library is part of C), then by your definitions, C has a stable ABI, as long as I limit myself to a single platform. But only if I limit myself to the subset of C that has a stable ABI on that platform, and don't try to use the parts of C that don't have a stable ABI on that platform, and then take care to use an implementation of the bits of C that don't have a stable ABI that, as an implementation issue, also promises a stable ABI on that platform, rather than an implementation with a different ABI, or even an unstable ABI.

Or I can use a language that also doesn't have a stable ABI of its own, and rely on the promises it makes, rather than digging through what "C has a stable ABI" means when you're not immersed in C on Linux day-in, day-out.

Possible Distributions quote of the year

Posted Jan 24, 2025 13:46 UTC (Fri) by bluca (subscriber, #118303) [Link] (2 responses)

Of course this is about one platform, the title of the page is "Distributions quote of the week", and it is talking about a specific distribution, and a specific issue. So yeah, that's what matters. Practicality matters, and academic dicussions are academic. You can have them if you want, but what matters here, today, is reality, not abstract discourses. And the practical reality is that glibc has had a stable ABI for the past 20 years and the Rust stdlib can't even go 20 minutes without breaking its own. And that matters in practice when building a distribution, no matter what purely abstract-level arguments one can concoct about the language(s) in general.

Possible Distributions quote of the year

Posted Jan 24, 2025 13:47 UTC (Fri) by bluca (subscriber, #118303) [Link]

Whops sorry Daroc I saw your request after replying here, I'd delete the reply if there was a button.

Possible Distributions quote of the year

Posted Jan 24, 2025 13:51 UTC (Fri) by farnz (subscriber, #17727) [Link]

Changing to "the glibc ABI is stable" is not what you said, though. You promised me that the C ABI is stable, and it's, as a practical matter, not, since I have a binary written in C using just a POSIX libc that I cannot run, because I no longer recall which specific C it depends upon.

Possible Distributions quote of the year

Posted Jan 24, 2025 18:01 UTC (Fri) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link] (1 responses)

> So what you're saying is that if someone accepts your definitions of what "C" is (after all, the standard library is part of C), then by your definitions, C has a stable ABI, as long as I limit myself to a single platform.

It's a stable ABI if you don't update it. See? Very easy!

Possible Distributions quote of the year

Posted Jan 24, 2025 19:01 UTC (Fri) by daroc (editor, #160859) [Link]

Possibly you didn't see my other comment — I think this discussion has gotten repetitive, and this comment doesn't add anything to it. Please, let's stop here.