HP-UX 11i September 2005 Release Notes

Introduction to HP-UX 11i Version 1
HP-UX 11i v1 Compatibility
Chapter 2
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HP-UX 11i v1 Compatibility
Compatibility from HP-UX 11.0 to 11i
HP has a long record of providing HP-UX compatibility. Because it protects your
investment and allows you to upgrade easily, compatibility is an important feature that
HP has always recognized and that HP customers have come to expect.
Compatibility requirements span across HP-UX products to third-party products as well.
All third-party products (and those products they call) are equally important
components in the complete customer environment. Customer solutions often have
complex, multiple chains of dependent applications spanning the entire range of HP-UX
products as well as third-party products. One broken link in the chain of dependencies
may result in an application that no longer works. Support for the unbroken string of
compatibility on HP-UX is one of the biggest and best benefits provided by HP.
HP-UX supports forward compatibility from 11.0 to 11i. This section describes what this
means for executable applications, object files, source files, data, and libraries.
Compatibility exceptions, including exceptions pertaining to Superdome systems, are
discussed in Chapter 14, “Compatibility,” in the HP-UX 11i December 2004 Release Notes
(and previous editions), available at http://docs.hp.com/en/oshpux11i.html.
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
(For known exceptions to compatibility from HP-UX 11.0 to 11i, see “Known
Compatibility Exceptions from HP-UX 11.0 to 11i” in the HP-UX 11i December 2004
Release Notes [and previous editions].)
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 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).