What could prevent from running a binary on linux distribution compiled on a different platform ?

Question

We have 2 different compilation machine: red hat as4 and as5. Our architects require us, developers, to compile our program on those 2 platforms each time before copying them on their respective machine in production.

What could prevent us from compiling our application on one machine only (let say the red has as 4 for instance) and deploy that binary on all target platform instead ?

What is your point of view and could you pinpoint specific issues you've encountered with doing so ? What issues may I face with doing so ?

Answer 1

Prevent? Nothing. An application that runs on EL4 should run on EL5 as well, barring things like external applications being different versions or libraries being obsoleted. However, Red Hat likes to do all sorts of tweaks to gcc that involve security and code optimization, and you'll miss out on any improvements in EL5 if you just copy the EL4-compiled binary.

Besides, everyone needs a break.

Answer 2

You could run into shared library incompatibilities by building on one system and running on another. It's not especially likely going between successive versions of Red Hat, but it is possible.

Another problem you could run into is if one system is 32 bits and the other 64 bits. In that case, the app compiled on the 64 bit machine wouldn't run on the 32 bit machine.

Answer 3

Whoa, compiling stuff then developers copying the binaries into production? That's some pretty whacky process you've got there.

Yes of course you can run the same binaries on RHEL 4 and 5 provided they are the same architecture and you have the dependencies installed.

I would strongly recommend that you build your binaries into a RPM, then you can have dependencies created for it, which will ensure it can only be installed when dependencies are satisified.

Moreover, it will enable your QA team** to install the same binary and carry out testing on a non-production system and such like, which they will definitely want to do before they let the software anywhere near the Ops team*** who will then deploy them, knowing that the relevant processes, including testing, have been carried out.

** You have one of those, right

*** surely you have one of those!