Re: Discussion about why GNU/Linux system upgrades cause old programs to break

> From: Richard Stallman <[email protected]>
> Cc: [email protected], [email protected]
> Date: Thu, 13 Aug 2026 14:43:11 -0400
> 
>   > Alternatively, a program should be built in a way that it links to a
>   > generic libFOO.so, not to a version-specific libFOO-nn.so.0, so that
>   > upgrading will redirect the generic link to the actual library, and
>   > programs will still work (provided that the new library is
>   > ABI-compatible with the old one).
> 
> Why/when do people link programs with the version-specific form library?

I think it's the GNU linker which does that.  But I'm not sure, as I'm
not an expert in this area.

> Do you think people misguidedly request that?

No, people are just running "make", and that produces the binaries as
the Makefile says.  But Makefile's rarely if ever change the fine
details of the linking process, instead leaving it to GCC to drive the
linker and link against the libraries specified via -lFOO linker
options.

> Do our tools sometimes lead people to do that by default?
> Can you suggest changes we could make to avoid such occurrences?

Sorry, not me.  That was just an idea; whether it is reasonable and
how to do that in practice should be discussed with Binutils experts.

>   > Not removed yet.  But, having read the relevant discussions, I won't
>   > be surprised if it will become an error (thus the build will be
>   > broken), and if the option to make it compile without warnings will be
>   > removed at some point.
> 
> We should _never_ go to that extreme.

I agree, and how that will actually never happen.  But given what I
read in the relevant discussions, I cannot be sure.