On Thu, 9 Dec 1999, Michael Richardson wrote:

:   Is there any reason to have library version numbers the same across
: platforms? 

We have a symmetrically environment compatible system, for the most part,
from one architecture to the next.  Just because one architecture switches
to ELF doesn't have any relevance on the version numbering scheme.

(...and on a sidenote, I've been working on some hacks to a "special" a.out
ld.so, and companion ELF module based on ld.elf_so, that would allow use of
ELF shared libraries on a.out binaries; this would eliminate the a.out libc
& friends completely.)

:   It sure would have made life easier to live without COMPAT_AOUT if we
: had bumped the major versions on ELF stuff!!!

Think of third party libraries, particularly those built from pkgsrc, which
have fixed version numbers.  COMPAT_AOUT only exists for binary
compatibility, and if you need that, then third party library version
numbers are just as affected.

-- 
-- Todd Vierling (tv@pobox.com)