Re: [pdf-devel] Binary compatibility

[Alfred M. Szmidt]

   How are we going to address the binary-compatibility issue? I think
   that this kind of library must be binary-compatible along wide
   version ranges to ease distribution maintainers and third-party
   client developer's life.

   The problem is that as all structures are defined in the public
   header files, we can't assure that the compiler will generate
   binary compatible code or that the library clients will make a
   binary-compatible use of it.

I am not sure what you mean with binary compatible now.  Binary
compatibility is between the program and the library, the compiler is
not involved at all.  It is when your program expects a int, but the
library upgrade its interface to using a float.

As long as the compiler and linker can talk to each other, it does not
matter what you put into a header or a library.  What matters is what
symbols the binary you run uses, and how they correspond to the
symbols in a library.

Binary compatibility can be solved using using linker scripts, see
`(ld) VERSION' for details.

So I am quite curious what you mean with binary compatibility, it does
not correspond to what is generally meant with that word.