The Versioning Mechanism

The Versioning Mechanism

In the IRIX 5.0.1 release, a mechanism for the versioning of shared objects was introduced for the Silicon Graphics shared objects and executables. Note that this mechanism is outside the scope of the MIPS ABI, and, thus, must not be relied on for code that must be MIPS ABI-compliant and run on other vendors' platforms. Currently, all executables produced on Silicon Graphics systems are marked SGI_ONLY to allow use of the versioning mechanism.

Versioning is of interest mainly to developers of shared objects. It may not be of interest to you if you simply use shared objects. Versioning allows a developer to update a shared object in a way that may be incompatible with executables previously linked against the shared object. You can accomplish this by renaming the original shared object and providing it along with the (incompatible) new version.