Quote:
Originally Posted by HarryT
That's why Pie said "binary compatible on the same platform". Which is, I believe, true.
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If you take that as being as strict as x86 Ubuntu 11.04, then you're right. However, even if you're talking about on a computer of the same architecture, you can still have binary incompatibility, due to dependencies, between distros. This is one of the problems Linux has had with gaining marketshare and support. If you don't use statically linked binaries, then when you attempt to run the app, it will look for its dependent binaries where they were located on the system on which it was compiled. There are some very common libraries that are located in different places, under different names, in the various distros.
If you statically link, you can't get any benefit from upgrades to the libraries used, since the copies of the libraries used are built in. So bug fixes and such will pass you by. Not only that but the size of your compiled app will be significantly larger, which if you are developing for mobile platforms that gets to be more of an issue due to limited amount of memory and storage.