RH compat-* packages for commercial software compatibility

[busomaka at libero.it]

I installed ubuntu 6.10 on a couple of workstation mainly intended for numerical computing.

I needed a linux os to support some commercial software we acquired, i.e. MSC.Marc 2005r3 finite element package, PGI fortran and Matlab 6.5r13.

This software is designed for RedHat distros and is often compiled against specific shared libs versions (libstdc++ 3.2.3 i.e.) or expects specific version of compiler tools.

It could be very frustrating installing and using this software on non RH based distros, i.e.
- on ubuntu 6.10, 32bit MSC.Marc solver returns SEGFAULT  systematically (libstdc++ incompatibility maybe, it requires gcc 3.2.3)
- on ubuntu 6.10, 64bit fortran the MSC.Marc solver works, but user subroutines couldn't be linked to the solver (problem with ld versions and binary solver code)

With Centos 4.4 and 4.92 everything works - as expected - out of the box.

It's a bit bad-looking taking RH 3.0/4.0 as a de facto reference and including in any other distro packages to ensure compatibility; however users who own commercial softare are constrained to officially supported platforms and can't migrate to different operating systems.

I must admit I don't know what really makes distros behave different for a tar.gz installed binary package, so maybe the amount of work this compatibility requires is extremely huge, but 

"It works in RH/Centos/...? It will work in ubuntu too!"

could sound very good :)

Best wishes

-- 
Enrico Bertocchi



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