HP-UX 11i June 2001 Release Notes

Compatibility
Compatibility from HP-UX 11.0 to 11i
Chapter 12228
The following types of compatibility are supported from 11.0 to 11i for
well-behaved applications:
• Binary compatibility
• Source compatibility
• Data compatibility
• Relocatable object compatibility
• Upgrade compatibility
Known exceptions to compatibility are described below.
A well-behaved application adheres to the following characteristics:
• Uses only documented, public APIs
• Adheres to the required practices that are specifically documented
• Does not use documented features that are specifically described as
having platform, architecture, or configuration limitations
• Does not decompose an HP-UX product and then reuse the results of
the decomposition
Binary Compatibility
An application that ran on HP-UX 11.0 will continue to run with the
same behavior on 32-bit and 64-bit HP-UX. An executable is a binary file
that has been processed by the HP link editor with ld or indirectly with
the compiler, and can be run by the HP-UX loader (exec).
Source Compatibility
Software that compiled on an HP-UX 11.0 release can be recompiled
without change on HP-UX 11i. The term "source" includes input source
to compilers, scripts, and makefiles.
Data Compatibility
An application can continue to access persistent data files, such as
system files, backup/recovery formats, and HP-documented data formats
via supported APIs in the same manner as the previous release. For
example, applications should access the password file information via