On 3 February 2012 11:15, robert somerville wrote: > it seems like we can run gcc-4.2 binaries on a redhat-ws4 system (main > compiler gcc 3.6.4) . Do you mean 3.4.6? There is no GCC 3.6 > I was a bit surprised . Forward comparability , > or gcc-4.2 libraries installed ? You can run ldd on the binary to see which libs it uses. If it's statically-linked or you have the 4.2 libs installed that would explain it. > Anybody care to comment on this or > the reliability of same ? G++ still uses the same ABI now as the 3.4 version, but there have been many changes to the shared libraries for the C++ runtime and standard library. If your 4.2-compiled binary happens to not use any of the new symbols from the 4.2 libs then it will be able to use the 3.4 libs, but you can't rely on that and it's not supported.
