On 2008 Jul 27, at 1:06 PM, Nicolas Mailhot wrote: > On Sun, 2008-07-27 at 21:46 +0200, edmund ronald wrote: > >> I'm sorry, there is something here I don't understand: If I >> ***REQUIRE*** unchanging semantics as far as possible, bugs and >> all, can I enforce that without static linking ? > > I'm sorry, but unchanging does not exist (and I've worked with > people who stockpiled components in nitrogen for decades). > > You either learn to manage changes or hit a big painful brick > wall sooner or later. If I'm not mistraken, edmund (and the others) is (are) concerned with unknown and unexpected changes outside of his (their) control and ability to test for. And, since shared libraries *aren't* always backwards compatible, never mind that the version number says that it should be, he needs a way to specify, say, ``Only version 3.1.4 of libFoo, nothing newer or older.'' After all, the bug fixed in 3.1.5 may well break the workaround edmund already coded. Of course, the next version of edmund's code will, if possible, use 3.1.5 instead of the b0rked 3.1.4. But changing the code out from underneath him...well, that's the sort of problem you create by trying to solve the limitations of the previous decade's computers. Cheers, b&