Comment by uecker
1 day ago
It should not be necessary to freeze it. glibc is already extremely backwards compatible. The problem is people distributing programs that request the newest version even though they do not really require it, and this then fails on systems having an older version. At least this is my understanding.
The actual practical problem is not glibc but the constant GUI / desktop API changes.
Making an executable “request” older symbol versions is incredibly painful in practice. Basically every substantial piece of binary software either compiles against an ancient Debian sysroot (that has to have workarounds for the ancient part) or somehow uses a separate glibc copy from the base system (Flatpak, etc.). The first greatly complicates building the software, the second is recreating Windows’ infamous DLL hell.
Both are way more annoying than anything the platforms without symbol versioning suffer from because of its lack. I’ve never encountered anyone who has packaged binaries for both Linux and Windows (or macOS, or the BSDs) that missed anything about Linux userspace ABIs when working with another platform.