The state of binary compatibility on Linux and how to address it
3 days ago
- #GLIBC
- #Linux
- #Binary Compatibility
- Linux binary compatibility is a significant challenge due to the diverse and evolving ecosystem of distributions, libraries, and services.
- Containerized solutions like Flatpak and AppImage attempt to address compatibility but introduce complexity and isolation issues, especially with system interactions like hardware-accelerated APIs.
- GLIBC's monolithic design is a core issue, tightly coupling system calls, memory management, threading, and the dynamic linker, making upgrades disruptive.
- Proposed solution: Decompose GLIBC into smaller, focused libraries (libsyscall, libdl, libheap, libthread, libc) to enable version coexistence and improve compatibility.
- Static linking and building against older system libraries (using tools like debootstrap) can mitigate compatibility issues without runtime containers.
- Challenges include shared resources (heap, TLS, threading) and global state (errno, locale), requiring careful architectural design to maintain compatibility.
- The article advocates for a fundamental redesign of Linux userspace with binary compatibility as a core principle, similar to Windows' approach.