Re:Flatpak Is Not the Future
by badsectoracula on Wednesday November 24, 2021 @02:05PM
(#29333799)
Actually you can, as long as it doesn't use Win10 APIs (or use them via dynamic loading) it will work on Win7.
The issue with glibc is that when you use it it adds requests for the latest versions of the exported symbols that the glibc you use in your system has. You can work around this in a variety of ways (e.g. use __asm__ to specify the version you want and use the header files of an older glibc to ensure that you aren't using incompatible calls) but you need to go out of your way to ensure that whereas in Windows you can just not use the API (well, also make sure your language's runtime library doesn't use the API either but in practice this is less of a concern).
Re:Flatpak Is Not the Future
by simiones on Thursday November 25, 2021 @08:31AM
(#29341209)
Actually you're right, I forgot that we used to ship software to various versions of Windows with just a single build based on more or less the latest VC++ runtime (that had re-distributable versions for all intended targets).
The issue with glibc is that when you use it it adds requests for the latest versions of the exported symbols that the glibc you use in your system has. You can work around this in a variety of ways (e.g. use __asm__ to specify the version you want and use the header files of an older glibc to ensure that you aren't using incompatible calls) but you need to go out of your way to ensure that whereas in Windows you can just not use the API (well, also make sure your language's runtime library doesn't use the API either but in practice this is less of a concern).