Comment by jandrese
3 years ago
The issue I see most often is someone compiled the application on a slightly newer version of Linux and when they try to run it on a slightly older machine it barfs saying that it needs GLIBC_2.31 and the system libc only has up to GLIBC_2.28 or something like that. Even if you aren't using anything that changed in the newer versions it will refuse to run.
That is not a bug. Just make a chroot with an older glibc and build there if you want to link against an older glibc. That easy.
It works with future versions, not with past versions.
That only works if you're the person who compiled the application.
A recent example where I ran into this: Cura 5.0+ won't run on Ubuntu 20 because the system libraries on Ubuntu 20 are too old.
That's an ergonomic deficiency. In practice, you probably need more than glibc, so then you have to make sure that other bits are available in this chroot. And if it so happens that one of the build tools that you rely on needs a newer version of glibc than the one you're building against, it still breaks down.
On Windows, you specify the target version of the platform when building, and you get a binary that is guaranteed to load on that platform.
> That's an ergonomic deficiency.
Do you build software on your desktop machine and ship it? Do you not build in a chroot (or container, how the cool kids call them nowadays) to make sure the build is actually using what you think it should be using?
You have to build in a chroot or similar in any case. Just use the CORRECT one.
> On Windows, you specify the target version of the platform when building, and you get a binary that is guaranteed to load on that platform.
Except if you need a c++ redistributable… then you must ship the redistributable .exe setup inside your setup because windows. Let's not pretend shipping software on windows is easier.
Anyway all of this only applies to proprietary software. For free sotware the distribution figures it all out, does automatic rebuilds if needed and so on.
Really, just stick to free software, it's much easier.
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> Even if you aren't using anything that changed in the newer versions it will refuse to run.
Nope, versioning is on a per symbol basis so if that prevents you from running the program it is actually using a symbol (i.e. function) that changed.
Flatpak exists to solve this.
Flatpak throws the baby out with the bathwater though. For example, on Ubuntu 22 if you install Firefox and don't have snaps enabled it installs the Flatpak, but if you do it can't access ffmpeg in the system so you can't play a lot of video files. It also fails to read your profile from Ubuntu 20 so you lose all of your settings, passwords, plugins, etc... It also wants to save files in some wierdass directory buried way deep in the /run filesystem. System integration also breaks, so if a Gnome app tries to open a link to a website the process silently fails.
> it can't access ffmpeg in the system so you can't play a lot of video files.
That's a typical packaging bug. Libraries should be bundled in the build or specified as a runtime dependency.
> It also fails to read your profile from Ubuntu 20 so you lose all of your settings, passwords, plugins, etc... It also wants to save files in some wierdass directory buried way deep in the /run filesystem. System integration also breaks, so if a Gnome app tries to open a link to a website the process silently fails.
All of this sucks and the user experience here needs a ton of work. I get the technical issues with co-mingling sandboxed and unsandboxed state, but there needs to be at least user-friendly options to migrate or share state with the sandbox.
A replacement for the xdg-open/xdg-mime/gio unholy trinity that offers runtime extension points for sandboxes might be nice. Maybe I could write a prototype service.
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