HP-UX 11i June 2003 Release Notes

Compatibility
Compatibility from HP-UX 11.0 to 11i
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• 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
NOTE For compatibility issues relevant to a particular component, see the corresponding
section elsewhere in this document.
Binary Compatibility
An application that has run on HP-UX 11.0 will continue to run with the same behavior
on 32-bit and 64-bit HP-UX 11i. This includes executables, binary files that have 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 has been 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 getpwent() rather than directly reading the file in order
to maintain data compatibility.
Relocatable Object Compatibility
A relocatable object can be a file (.o), shared library (.sl), or an archive library (.a).
Several types of object binary compatibility are below (note that some executables are
not supported):
• Release-to-release relocatable object binary compatibility: If an executable is
created by linking with forward-compatible, relocatable objects from different
releases—or by using shl_load() and dlopen() to dynamically load shared
libraries built on a different release—than the application is only supported from
HP-UX 11.0 to 11i.
However, linking pre-HP-UX 11.0 libraries and HP-UX 11.0 and 11i libraries in one
relocatable object/executable is not supported.
CAUTION Even though the linker will permit the linking of pre-HP-UX 11.0 libraries and HP-UX
11.0 and 11i libraries in one relocatable object/executable (and will not exhibit any
warning or error messages), the executable may exhibit incorrect behavior.