[OpenAFS] Distro vs. @sys. Round 1: FIGHT!

[Gary Buhrmaster]

On Thu, Aug 23, 2012 at 2:02 PM, Jeff Blaine <jblaine@kickflop.net> wrote:
....
> Due to drastic differences in OS libraries present, those (like us),
> who use @sys in PATH, get bitten. That is, our build of AppX for
> 'amd64_linux26' that was built on RHEL 5 will not work on RHEL 6,
> and we need to support both.

In the case of "system" libraries (vs what you might install locally),
RedHat typically provides one version compatibility.  If it was built
on RHEL5, it should run on RHEL6, although you may have to install
various "compatibility" libraries.  If it does not, you should open a
ticket with RedHat.

But the general problem remains, especially in the Linux world
where libraries/interface backwards compatibility has not been
a historically agreed upon requirement.  (AIX, *BSD, Solaris
generally support even older interfaces; I think we were running
an old SunOS binary through many versions of Solaris).

Iff you have a standard (and supported) distro, using that as
a high level distinguisher as part of your syslist may make
sense.  I know that at $dayjob$ there was a very long debate
regarding the syslist sequence, and trying to deal with both
the known examples, and some obvious edge cases, and the
end result made no one entirely happy.  I think that is likely
the end state for all such taxonomy attempts.  "Get used to
disappointment".  The best one can do is pick something
that makes a little bit of sense, and try to consider building
in the flexibility to change it (because you likely will).

Gary