Re: [PATCH] change GLIBC PPC64/ELF2 ABI default to 2.17

[Adam Conrad <adconrad at 0c3 dot net>]

On Thu, Jan 30, 2014 at 08:10:18PM -0600, Steven Munroe wrote:
> 
> 2) Leaving the default at 2.18 would reduce (but not eliminate) the risk
> for some distributors (2.18 back-ports) but still excludes others (again
> for some long period of time). 

This is pretty much flat-out untrue.  It excludes no one.  People who
have done a 2.17 backport need to fix their symbol versions, and that's
it.  If there's a shared branch for that backport, even better, it only
needs to get done once.

I suspect that, despite hints to the contrary, the only people who plan
to ship glibc 2.17 on ppc64el are RedHat anyway (and their derivatives,
who would just get whatever they do for free), so it comes down to one
package in one distro that, as far as the rest of us can tell, has no
public-facing binaries, has not built a mess of things around the port,
and somehow neglected to get involved (at all!) in this discussion the
last time it came up.

I could certainly live with any of the three options if I had to, but
my order of responses would be something like:

1) 2.18, because it's in the current upstream and used most in the wild
2) 2.19, screw us all, prove a point, pound sand, hate each other until
   we next bump into the lot at a conference, drink, laugh, and cry, and
   remember we're more than just random chars in a mail client
3) 2.17, because rewarding bad behaviour is what FLOSS is all about (in
   fact, I should get my option twice, with bells on, after my somewhat
   uncalled-for response the Jeff, sorry about that)

... Adam