Can an application depend on two different versions of libstdc++ at the same time? (e.g.: libstdc++5 and libstdc++6)? The scenario being - some binary depends on libstdc++ 6 but loads an .so that depends on libstdc++5...
Will that have any chance of working?
I'm sure two libraries can co-exist as long as there are no multiple definition conflicts.
However, I think you can find at least one function signature that didn't change between versions. ;)
So I'm gonna go with no: they will conflict. But this is within the same application.
If you are dynamically (not static) linking with another library, you will not conflict.
Most importantly, you need to check if those two versions of the library are binary compatible or not. G++ 3.3 and 3.4 are not, for example.
And even if they are: * There can be name mangling issues * You cannot do cross module allocation/deallocation (a bad idea anyway) * You probably can't work around modules with STL
I just recently ported a C++ application from AS3/GCC323 to AS4/GCC346. Although the app itself linked to libstdc++.so.6 some of the libraries it linked to were still linking to libstdc++.so.5. Depsite building successfully it SEGV'ed when i tried to run it.
Once I recompiled the libraries on AS4/GCC346 as well, the app and the libraries only linked to libstdc++.so.6 and the SEGV's no longer occurred.
So i would say the answer is no you can't link to both.
Jon