On Thu, Aug 26, 2010 at 20:51, Richard O'Keefe
Maybe Linux is different. One thing is NOT different, and that is Linux upgrades *DO* reliably break programs that use dynamic linking. Dynamic libraries get - left out - changed incompatibly - moved some place else - changed compatibly but the version number altered so the dynamic linker doesn't believe it, or the foolsXXXXXXkind people who built the program wired in a demand for a particular version Indeed, every Linux upgrade I've had I've found myself screaming in frustration because programs *weren't* statically linked.
Upgrading Linux should never, ever cause applications to stop working unless they were designed incorrectly in the first place. Low-level system libraries like glibc are the only code which needs to access Linux directly. However, most of the problems you mentioned (removed/modified dynamic libraries) are not part of Linux at all. If your distribution has poor quality control, you should consider switching to a better one -- I've heard good news about both Debian and RHEL in this area. Desktop-oriented distributions, such as Ubuntu or Fedora, are not suitable for long-term (> 6 years or so) installations. Haskell, of course, takes ABI pickiness to an absolute maximum. One of my most wished-for features is a way to provide C-style stable ABIs for Haskell shared libraries, so I could (for example) upgrade a support library and have every installed application pick it up.