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Subject: -21- Binary Compatibility on different releases
Date: 17 Oct 97 00:00:01 EST
o Compatibility issues with previous Performer releases:
IRIS Performer release have a number of 3 fields: Major.Minor.Maint
Maintenance releases are binary compatible with all versions of
the same Major.Minor base release. For example, 2.0.1, 2.0.2, 2.0.3
and 2.0.4 are all binary compatible with each other and are
all binarcy compatible with their base release, 2.0. Maintenance
releases contain bug fixes and the highest maintenance number will
be the most recent release. Different Major.Minor releases are not
binary compatible; ie: IRIS Performer 2.0 is not binary compatible
with IRIS Performer 2.1. For this reason, IRIS Performer releases
include compatibility libraries from previous releases (properly
versioned and suffixed for the IRIX environment) so that old
IRIS Performer applications will continue to run without re-linking.
Performer compatibility issues with IRIX 5.3:
Applications created with IRIS Performer 2.0 using IRIX 5.3 also
run under IRIX 6.1 and later IRIX releases in 32-bit mode. The
32-bit applications created using IRIX 5.3 will not make use of
64-bit address space and other MIPS III/IV features provided by the
IRIS Performer N32 and N64 development environment under IRIX 6.2
and later operating system releases.
Note that applications built on an IRIX 6.1 or 6.2 systems are not
guaranteed to run properly on 5.3 systems, due to changes in
structures used by system libraries. (This is true even for
applications that do not use IRIS Performer-- applications built on
later versions of IRIX may not run on earlier ones). Therefore to
produce an O32 executable that will run on all SGI systems 5.3 and
later, the compiling must be done on an IRIX 5.3 system.
Performer compatibility issues with IRIX 6.1:
Applications created with IRIS Performer 2.0 under IRIX 6.1 can be
compiled and linked for 32-bit IRIX 5.3-style execution (known as
Old 32-bit mode, or O32) only. IRIS Performer programs built for
the two new executable types (N32 and N64) are not operable on
pre-6.2 systems -- specifically, they will not run on IRIX 5.3 or
6.1 systems.
O32 IRIS Performer programs will run on IRIX 6.1. However, the
OpenGL development environment of IRIX 6.1 is not as full featured
as the 32-bit OpenGL of IRIX 5.3 or IRIX 6.2. This can cause both
low-performance and lack-of-feature problems for developers
creating OpenGL applications. For this reason, developers are
advised to build only IRIS GL applications on IRIX 6.1 systems or
to upgrade to IRIX 6.2 for access to its enhanced 32-bit and 64-bit
OpenGL development environment.
Performer compatibility issues with IRIX 6.2:
IRIS Performer 2.0 and 2.1 are compatible with IRIX 6.2 and later
IRIX relases. Applications can be developed for all three execution
modes: O32, N32, and N64.
The IRIX 6.2 32-bit and 64-bit OpenGL implementations have the
RealityEngine feature extensions and performance enhancements found
in IRIX 5.3. For this reason, developers are urged to use IRIX 6.2
or later rather than IRIX 6.1 for OpenGL development. As mentioned
above, IRIS Performer applications built in either N32 or N64 mode
will not run on IRIX 5.3 or 6.1 systems, and, in general,
applications should not be run on earlier versions of IRIX than the
machine on which they are compiled.
Applications using Performer 1.2/IRIX5 are binary compatible with
machines running Irix 5.2, 5.3, 6.0, and later IRIX releases
without relinking.
IRIS Performer 1.0 requires IRIX 4.0.5 or later. Because IRIX
4.0.5F added several new GL calls to support RealityEngine
features, an application that uses GL routines or tokens found only
in 4.0.5F and later does not run properly under 4.0.5, 4.0.5B, or
4.0.5C. When run on these earlier IRIX releases, an IRIS Performer
1.0 application making calls to GL functions or using GL tokens
that are undefined in the run-time environment cause run-time
errors or undefined behavior.
An IRIS Performer 1.0 binary compiled and linked under IRIX
releases earlier than 4.0.5F will run under IRIX 4.0.5F and later,
but some RealityEngine features are not directly accessible to the
application. An application can still access RealityEngine
features supported automatically or explicitly through IRIS
Performer when linked with IRIS Performer shared libraries.
Running a IRIS Performer application built with IRIX 4.0.5 on IRIX
5.X is not recommended. In particular, multiprocess applications
cannot take advantage of all processors. Also, because IRIX 4.0.5's
relaxed shared memory accounting was replaced by a despotic and
stricter regime under IRIX 5.2, a Performer application built on
4.0.5 will need a much larger amount of swap space to be allocated up
front unless PFTMPDIR is used to specify a memory mapped file.
Up: SGI performer Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
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