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The state of binary compatibility on Linux and how to address it

(jangafx.com)
196 points generichuman | 4 comments | 01 Apr 25 22:22 UTC | HN request time: 0.626s | source
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James_K ◴[02 Apr 25 00:50 UTC] No.43552753[source]▶
Here's a thought: just distribute source code. ABI issues should be mostly fixed. Most computers can compile source code fast enough for the user not to notice and cache the results so that it's never a problem again. If you want optimised code, you can do a source to source optimisation then zip and minify the file. You could compile such a library to approximately native speeds without much user-end lag using modern JIT methods, and maybe even run LTO in a background thread so that the exectuables outdo dynamically linked ones.
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RedShift1 ◴[02 Apr 25 01:24 UTC] No.43552904[source]▶
I hate compiling. 9/10 something goes wrong. Sometimes I can fix it, other times I just abandon the effort and use something else. These days I just use packages or docker images and if that doesn't work out I'm moving on, ain't nobody got time for this. You really can't expect people who just want to use their computers and don't even know what a compiler is to get involved in a process like that.
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ses1984 ◴[02 Apr 25 01:38 UTC] No.43552959[source]▶
No, end users need not get involved, it could/should be handled by the operating system.
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1. HKH2 ◴[02 Apr 25 03:03 UTC] No.43553292[source]▶
Gentoo? Compiling big packages takes ages.
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2. adrian_b ◴[02 Apr 25 08:44 UTC] No.43554759[source]▶
More than 20 years, with a single-core Pentium 4, it could take indeed something like 3 days of continuous compilation to compile an entire Gentoo distribution, in order to have a personal computer with every application that one might want.

However, already after the appearance of the first dual-core AMD Athlon64, 20 years ago, that time could be reduced to not much more than a half of day, while nowadays, with a decent desktop CPU from 5 years ago, most Gentoo packages can be compiled and installed in less than a minute.

There are only a few packages whose compilation and installation can take a noticeable time, of up to tens of minutes, depending on the chosen options and on the number of cores of the CPU, e.g. Firefox, LibreOffice, LLVM.

There is only a single package whose compilation may take ages unless you have an expensive CPU and enough memory per core: Google Chromium (including its derivatives that use the same code base).

3. seba_dos1 ◴[02 Apr 25 10:52 UTC] No.43555414[source]▶
I can effortlessly compile Debian packages on my phone.

With some limits of course. I can't compile Chromium even on my laptop. But most of stuff - I can.

4. James_K ◴[02 Apr 25 19:49 UTC] No.43560757[source]▶
Not Gentoo. The system I'm suggesting is one where you replace the linker with one which accepts a platform agnostic assembly code with similar semantics to C, and perhaps some additional tools for stack traversal to allow the implementation of garbage collected languages and exceptions. Compiling would be fast because the code you distribute would have already had optimisations applied to it in a pre-compilation step. It would also be automatic in the same way the present linker system is automatic.