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We have a grid computing environment, comprised primarily of CentOS 5.10 hosts, that people compile applications on and then run them.

We're mulling an upgrade to CentOS 6.7 and we're wondering if glibc on it would be backwards-compatible with CentOS 5.10 as we won't be able to roll out the upgrade in one go (e.g. it could happen that somebody compiles on 6.7 and then the compile is dispatched to a 5.10 host to execute).

Essentially will glibc-compiled programs on CentOS 6.7 run on CentOS 5.10?

We have had a look at the source of glibc for 6.7 (can't recall the correct version) and we believe it should be but were hoping for a second opinion.

Nobilis
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The ABI between CentOS 5 and 6 is not guaranteed to be identical. This means that your programs may work, but this is not sure at all. Moreover, any packages/libs upgrade can stop your application from work.

In other words, I strongly suggest you to do not go down this road.

shodanshok
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  • Many thanks, what is a concern to us is that CentOS 5 is reaching its planned End-of-Life and an upgrade to CentOS 6 has been on the cards for a while but we've postponed it for various reasons. Legacy compiles are not an issue, just fresh ones so we might need to set up an environment where our users can compile on 6 and test on 5 to see the extent of the issue. – Nobilis Apr 18 '16 at 13:21