C++ compatibility package dropped

[Jeff Spaleta]

On 6/26/05, Mike Hearn <mike at plan99.net> wrote:
> Windows and MacOS have good backwards compatibility, and that's a
> capability. So we need to match it.

Apple garuntees very limited backwards compatibility  for c++ dso
STARTING with the introduction of gcc 4.0
http://developer.apple.com/documentation/DeveloperTools/Conceptual/CppRuntimeEnv/index.html

quoting
http://developer.apple.com/documentation/DeveloperTools/Conceptual/CppRuntimeEnv/index.html


"Apple guarantees ABI stability only for core language features. It
does not guarantee stability for library classes, including
std::string, std::map<T>, and std::ostream among others."


quoting
http://developer.apple.com/documentation/DeveloperTools/Conceptual/CppRuntimeEnv/index.html

"If your application must support versions of Mac OS X prior to
10.3.9, you must continue to link statically to libstdc++.a. You
should also not use the GCC 4.0 compiler to create C++ programs for
systems prior to 10.3.9"

How about we not make over-reaching claims about what other operating
systems do about backwards compatibility. If ALL application writers
in the universe were linking statically to libsdc++ like Apple
demanded before the release 10.3.9  would there be much to talk about
in this thread?

Do not confuse the objective list for Fedora as a set of garuntees for
any Fedora Core release. Those objectives are long term goals that the
project is working towards. If the upstream project developers
stability of the exposed interfaces... 3rd party vendors should
absolutely be aware of that before they decide to link dynamically to
the library. Holding the downstream distributor responsible for the
lack of stability is a bit.. short-sighted.

-jef