Linking against older symbol version in a .so file

Question

Using gcc and ld on x86_64 linux I need to link against a newer version of a library (glibc 2.14) but the executable needs to run on a system with an older version (2.5). Si

Answer 1

I'm clearly a little late responding to this but I recently upgraded (more reasons to never upgrade) my Linux OS to XUbuntu 14.04 which came with the new libc. I compile a shared library on my machine which is used by clients who, for whatever legitimate reasons, have not upgraded their environment from 10.04. The shared library I compiled no longer loaded in their environment because gcc put a dependency on memcpy glibc v. 2.14 (or higher). Let's leave aside the insanity of this. The workaround across my whole project was three fold:

1. added to my gcc cflags: -include glibc_version_nightmare.h
2. created the glibc_version_nightmare.h
3. created a perl script to verify the symbols in the .so

glibc_version_nightmare.h:

#if defined(__GNUC__) && defined(__LP64__)  /* only under 64 bit gcc */
#include        /* for glibc version */
#if defined(__GLIBC__) && (__GLIBC__ == 2) && (__GLIBC_MINOR__ >= 14)
/* force mempcy to be from earlier compatible system */
__asm__(".symver memcpy,memcpy@GLIBC_2.2.5");
#endif
#undef _FEATURES_H      /* so gets reloaded if necessary */
#endif

perl script fragment:

...
open SYMS, "nm $flags $libname |";

my $status = 0;

sub complain {
my ($symbol, $verstr) = @_;
print STDERR "ERROR: $libname $symbol requires $verstr\n";
$status = 1;
}

while () {
next unless /\@\@GLIBC/;
chomp;
my ($symbol, $verstr) = (m/^\s+.\s(.*)\@\@GLIBC_(.*)/);
die "unable to parse version from $libname in $_\n"
    unless $verstr;
my @ver = split(/\./, $verstr);
complain $symbol, $verstr
    if ($ver[0] > 2 || $ver[1] > 10);
}
close SYMS;

exit $status;