glibc_version_header
nixpkgs
glibc_version_header | nixpkgs | |
---|---|---|
8 | 975 | |
767 | 15,753 | |
- | 2.8% | |
0.0 | 10.0 | |
3 months ago | 4 days ago | |
C++ | Nix | |
MIT License | MIT License |
Stars - the number of stars that a project has on GitHub. Growth - month over month growth in stars.
Activity is a relative number indicating how actively a project is being developed. Recent commits have higher weight than older ones.
For example, an activity of 9.0 indicates that a project is amongst the top 10% of the most actively developed projects that we are tracking.
glibc_version_header
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Flatpak Is Not the Future
One major headache with trying to run precompiled binaries on Linux is that if they were compiled using a newer version of glibc than the target machine, they won't be able to run. Back while working on Factorio, I was trying to get around this problem with endless Docker containers, but coworker Wheybags came up with a much solution to this, which is simply to, at compile time, link to the oldest compatible version of glibc: https://github.com/wheybags/glibc_version_header
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Win32 Is the Only Stable ABI on Linux
If what you're doing works for you, great, but in case it stops working at some point (or if for some reason you need to build on a current-gen distro version), you could also consider using this:
https://github.com/wheybags/glibc_version_header
It's a set of autogenerated headers that use symbol aliasing to allow you to build against your current version of glibc, but link to the proper older versioned symbols such that it will run on whatever oldest version of glibc you select.
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Because cross-compiling binaries for Windows is easier than building natively
There are other approaches like https://github.com/wheybags/glibc_version_header or sysroots with older glibc, e.g. https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Crossdev - you don't need your whole XP, just the the system libs to link against.
Sure, having a nice SDK where you can just specify the minimum vesion you want to support would be nice but who do you expect to develop such an SDK? GNU/glibc maintainers? They would rather you ship as source. Red Hat / SUSE / Canonical? They want you to target only their distro. Valve? They decided its easier to just provide an unchaning set of libraries since they need to support existing games that got things wrong anyway and already have a distribution platform to distribute such a base system along with the games without bundling it into every single one.
- Glibc Version Header Generator
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Thank You, Valve
A few links gathered from a quick google search as a primer:
http://stevehanov.ca/blog/?id=97
https://www.evanjones.ca/portable-linux-binaries.html
https://insanecoding.blogspot.com/2012/07/creating-portable-...
https://rpg.hamsterrepublic.com/ohrrpgce/Portable_GNU-Linux_...
https://github.com/wheybags/glibc_version_header
In other words: there are a lot of steps and a lot of gotchyas to doing this that you're glossing over. Linux userland libraries are generally designed with the intention that an army of third-party maintainers will integrate all of this desperately developed software together and place it in a repo. Naturally every distribution wants to do things a little differently too, and they have a habit of changing it up every couple years. When you try to step out of that mold things unsurprisingly become more difficult. Whereas Windows, Mac, Android, etc. have been designed since the beginning not to require that sort of thing and it is consequently a much, much more straightforward process.
I'm curious why, since you seem to believe the process is so straight-forward, you think it is that so few people distribute a simple binary? Why were Flatpak and AppImage invented?
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“LLVM-Libc” C Standard Library
> Binaries compiled against today's glibc can fail to run on a machine that hasn't been updated since last week because they rely on a new / different symbol.
Note, however, that it is a Glibc bug (modulo Drepper’s temper) if the reverse happens: Glibc symbol versioning ensures that binaries depending on an old Glibc (only) will run on a new one. So the proper way to build a maximally-compatible Linux executable would be to build a cross toolchain targeting an old Glibc and compile your code with it. Unfortunately, the build system is hell and old Glibcs doesn’t compile without backported patches, so while I did try to follow in the footsteps of a couple of people[1–4], I did not succeed.
Mass-rebuilds still happen with other ecosystems, though. GHC-compiled Haskell libraries are fine-grained and not ABI-stable across compiler versions, so my Arch box regularly gets hit with a deluge of teensy library updates, and Arch is currently undergoing a massive Python rebuild (blocking all other Python package updates) behind the scenes as well.
[1]: https://github.com/wheybags/glibc_version_header (hack but easy and will probably work most of the time)
nixpkgs
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Nix: The Breaking Point
I don't think so. The article is probably intended for the Nix community, so the author doesn't need to convince HN that something is going on. If as an outsider you are interested then you need to look into it yourself, the community has no obligation to make their internal conflicts legible to the outside world.
As an outsider myself, it certainly looks like something is going on as more than 20 Nixpkg maintainers left in a week: https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/issues?q=label%3A%228.has%3...
- Maintainers Leaving
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Air Force picks Anduril, General Atomics to develop unmanned fighter jets
https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/commits?author=neon-sunset
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Eelco Dolstra's leadership is corrosive to the Nix project
I see two signers in the top 6 displayed on https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/graphs/contributors
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3rd Edition of Programming: Principles and Practice Using C++ by Stroustrup
For a single file script, nix can make the package management quite easy: https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/blob/master/doc/languages-f...
For example,
```
- NixOS/nixpkgs: There isn't a clear canonical way to refer to a specific package
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NixOS Is Not Reproducible
Yes, Nix doesn't actually ensure that the builds are deterministic. In fact it works just fine if they aren't. There are packages in nixpkgs that aren't reproducible: https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/issues?q=is%3Aopen+is%3Aiss...
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The xz attack shell script
I'm not familiar with Bazel, but Nix in it's current form wouldn't have solved this attack. First of all, the standard mkDerivation function calls the same configure; make; make install process that made this attack possible. Nixpkgs regularly pulls in external resources (fetchUrl and friends) that are equally vulnerable to a poisoned release tarball. Checkout the comment on the current xz entry in nixpkgs https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/blob/master/pkgs/tools/comp...
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Debian Git Monorepo
NixOS uses a monorepo and I think everyone's love it.
I love being able to easily grep through all the packages source code and there's regularly PRs that harmonizes conventions across many packages.
Nixpkgs doesn't include the packaged software source code, so it's a lot more practical than what Debian is doing.
https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs
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From xz to ibus: more questionable tarballs
In this specific case, nix uses fetchFromGitHub to download the source archive, which are generated by GitHub for the specified revision[1]. Arch seems to just download the tarball from the releases page[2].
[1]: https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/blob/3c2fdd0a4e6396fc310a6e...
[2]: https://gitlab.archlinux.org/archlinux/packaging/packages/ib...
What are some alternatives?
holy-build-box - System for building cross-distribution Linux binaries
asdf - Extendable version manager with support for Ruby, Node.js, Elixir, Erlang & more
overwatch-aimbot - 🔫🎮 An OpenCV based Overwatch Aimbot for Windows
Home Manager using Nix - Manage a user environment using Nix [maintainer=@rycee]
osxcross - Mac OS X cross toolchain for Linux, FreeBSD, OpenBSD and Android (Termux)
git-lfs - Git extension for versioning large files
manylinux - Python wheels that work on any linux (almost)
easyeffects - Limiter, compressor, convolver, equalizer and auto volume and many other plugins for PipeWire applications
mach - zig game engine & graphics toolkit
spack - A flexible package manager that supports multiple versions, configurations, platforms, and compilers.
musl-cross-make - Simple makefile-based build for musl cross compiler
waydroid - Waydroid uses a container-based approach to boot a full Android system on a regular GNU/Linux system like Ubuntu.