Re: Multiple OS Build

[Ralph Lange <ralph.lange@gmx.de>]

On Mon, Jan 9, 2017 at 7:06 PM, Andrew Johnson <anj@aps.anl.gov> wrote:

The approach that we use here at APS for extensions such as MEDM (which
we install on a shared drive) is to always build these tools on the
oldest OS version that we currently support, and ensure that any newer
OSs always install the necessary backwards-compatibility packages that
provide older .so versions of the system libraries so those older OS
binaries will run properly on the newer OS. This works for us on RHEL,
but I don't know if Debian provides those kinds of packages.

In most cases Debian does not need that, as each shared library usually has the SONAME as part of the package name, so that multiple versions of the same library can coexist on a single host.

(Something that is purely conventional and RedHat deliberately does not do, thus requiring the -compat package workaround.)

Nevertheless, packaging might be the better option, if you have to support multiple (if not many) versions of the same Linux flavor.

~Ralph