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OpenBSD doesn't have to care about compatibility as much, and has orders of magnitude less users. Which also means that changes are less likely to cause bugs fr

OpenBSD doesn't have to care about compatibility as much, and has orders of magnitude less users. Which also means that changes are less likely to cause bugs from obscure edge cases.

zdw 1y ago
OpenBSD (and most other BSDs) are willing to make changes that break binary backwards compatibility, because they maintain and ship both the kernel and userland together as a release and can thus "steer the whole ship", rather than the kernel being it's own separate component developed like with Linux.
- mardifoufs 1y ago
  Sure, that's usually true, but Debian also has that ability in this case ( they can fix, patch, or update everything in the repository). The issue is mostly with all software that isn't part of the distribution and the official repositories. Which is a lot of software especially for Debian. OpenBSD doesn't have that issue, breaking the ABI won't cause tens of thousands of user applications to break. But I agree that Debian is still too slow to move forward with critical changes even with that in mind. I just don't think that OpenBSD is the best comparison point.
anthk 1y ago
Guess where OpenSSH comes from.
- mardifoufs 1y ago
  What? What does that have to do with what I said? Nothing that I said was about the project as a whole. I was just saying that the OS has different constraints than Debian does. What does openssh have to do with how easy it is for OpenBSD to break ABI compatibility?
throw0101d 1y ago
> OpenBSD doesn't have to care about compatibility as much FreeBSD did it in 2012 (for the 2014 release of 10.0?): * https://github.com/freebsd/freebsd-src/commit/8f77be2b4ce5e3a3408218495d572d3681d9f5c3 https://github.com/freebsd/freebsd-src/commit/8f77be2b4ce5e3... And has compat layers going back many releases: * https://www.freshports.org/misc/compat4x/ https://www.freshports.org/misc/compat4x/ * https://wiki.freebsd.org/BinaryCompatibility https://wiki.freebsd.org/BinaryCompatibility So newly (re-)compiled programs can take advantage of newer features, but old binaries continue to work.

OpenBSD doesn't have to care about compatibility as much, and has orders of magnitude less users. Which also means that changes are less likely to cause bugs from obscure edge cases.

zdw 1y ago

OpenBSD (and most other BSDs) are willing to make changes that break binary backwards compatibility, because they maintain and ship both the kernel and userland together as a release and can thus "steer the whole ship", rather than the kernel being it's own separate component developed like with Linux.

mardifoufs 1y ago
Sure, that's usually true, but Debian also has that ability in this case ( they can fix, patch, or update everything in the repository). The issue is mostly with all software that isn't part of the distribution and the official repositories. Which is a lot of software especially for Debian. OpenBSD doesn't have that issue, breaking the ABI won't cause tens of thousands of user applications to break. But I agree that Debian is still too slow to move forward with critical changes even with that in mind. I just don't think that OpenBSD is the best comparison point.

anthk 1y ago

Guess where OpenSSH comes from.

mardifoufs 1y ago
What? What does that have to do with what I said? Nothing that I said was about the project as a whole. I was just saying that the OS has different constraints than Debian does. What does openssh have to do with how easy it is for OpenBSD to break ABI compatibility?

throw0101d 1y ago

> OpenBSD doesn't have to care about compatibility as much FreeBSD did it in 2012 (for the 2014 release of 10.0?): * https://github.com/freebsd/freebsd-src/commit/8f77be2b4ce5e3a3408218495d572d3681d9f5c3 https://github.com/freebsd/freebsd-src/commit/8f77be2b4ce5e3... And has compat layers going back many releases: * https://www.freshports.org/misc/compat4x/ https://www.freshports.org/misc/compat4x/ * https://wiki.freebsd.org/BinaryCompatibility https://wiki.freebsd.org/BinaryCompatibility So newly (re-)compiled programs can take advantage of newer features, but old binaries continue to work.