Re: Can I run an application compiled with gcc ABI 2.95 on a kernel compiled with gcc ABI 3.4?

[Ben Dooks <ben-linux@fluff.org>]

On Fri, May 15, 2009 at 02:51:05PM +0100, Jamie Lokier wrote:
> David Woodhouse wrote:
> > On Fri, 2009-05-15 at 13:50 +0200, muzungu@gmx.net wrote:
> > > Questions:
> > > - Can I run an application compiled with gcc ABI 2.95 on a kernel
> > > compiled with gcc ABI 3.4?
> > 
> > Yes. The kernel ABI never changes in a backward-incompatible fashion.
> > Unless you try switching your kernel to ARM EABI and don't update
> > userspace to match -- don't do that :)
> 
> Eek, can you say a bit more about the ARM EABI mismatch?
> 
> I would like to run a shiny modern ARM EABI kernel and userspace, but
> also need to run one or two OABI binaries (from the gcc 2.95 era) on
> the same kernel which I cannot recompile because they're built with
> closed source libraries only supplied as OABI.
> 
> Does that not work at all?

There are a few ioctl() incompatibilities between the two ABIs, the
main problems are within the ALSA API. Mostly it will work, but there
are a couple of caveats.

-- 
Ben

Q:      What's a light-year?
A:      One-third less calories than a regular year.