HP-UX 11i September 2001 Release Notes

Compatibility
Compatibility from HP-UX 11.0 to 11i
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• 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 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 included here:
• Release-to-release relocatable object binary compatibility - an executable created by
linking with forward-compatible, relocatable objects from different releases or 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.
NOTE 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, but the executable may exhibit incorrect behavior.
• Archive and shared relocatable object compatibility - an executablecreated by linking
with a shared library that has dependencies on an archive library. This situation
typically occurs when linking with archive system libraries. THIS IS NOT
SUPPORTED.