Qualifying source code on HP-UX

Software compatibility from HP-UX 11.0 to HP-UX 11i

The HP-UX 11i release provides new hardware enablement, additional software functionality, and new APIs and various HP-UX applications bundled into an operating environment.

HP-UX 11i provides forward compatibility from 11.0 to 11i. The following types of binary compatibility are supported from 11.0 to 11i for well-behaved applications:

Well-behaved applications do not make assumptions about:

• run-time architecture
• platform architecture
• object file format

since any of the above can cause binary incompatibilities. Many of these assumptions are made by:

• how data is read from or written to memory
• using ambiguously defined data types or data types that have changed size

For more detailed information regarding well-behaved applications restrictions refer to well-behaved application restrictions document.

• Binary compatibility
  • An application that ran on HP-UX 11.0 will continue to run with the same behavior on 32-bit and 64-bit HP-UX. An executable is a binary file that has been processed by the HP link editor with ld or indirectly with the compiler, and can be run by the HP-UX loader (exec).
• Source compatibility
  • Software that compiled on an HP-UX 11.0 release can be recompiled without change on HP-UX 11i. The term "source" includes input source to compilers, scripts, and makefiles.
• Data compatibility
  • An application can continue to access persistent data files, such as system files, backup/recovery formats, and HP-documented data formats via supported APIs in the same manner as the previous release. For example, applications should access the password file information via getpwent() rather than directly reading the file in order to maintain data compatibility.
• Relocatable object compatibility
  • A relocatable object can be a file (.o), shared library (.sl), or an archive library (.a). Several types of object binary compatibility are included here:
  • Release-to-release relocatable object binary compatibility - an executable created by linking with forward-compatible, relocatable objects from different releases or using shl_load() and dlopen() to dynamically load shared libraries built on a different release than the application is ONLY SUPPORTED from HP-UX 11.0 to 11i. However, linking pre-HP-UX 11.0 libraries and HP-UX 11.0 and 11i libraries in one relocatable object/executable is NOT SUPPORTED.
  • Archive and shared relocatable object compatibility - an executable created by linking with a shared library that has dependencies on an archive library. This situation typically occurs when linking with archive system libraries. THIS IS NOT SUPPORTED.
  • Data model relocatable object compatibility - an executable created by linking with a mixture of 32-bit and 64-bit objects. THIS IS NOT SUPPORTED. The loader will not permit this.
• Upgrade compatibility
  • Customized configurations and data from HP-UX 11.0 are preserved upon installation and upgrade to HP-UX 11i.

For more information regarding the HP-UX 11i compatibility please refer to the HP-UX 11i release notes.