alt Hacker NewsPlenty of operating systems work like this. Just not highly commercial ones because proprietary software is the norm on those.
From a bit of research it looks like FreeBSD for example only provides a stable ABI within minor versions and I imagine if you build something for FreeBSD 14 it won’t work on 13.
Stable ABI literally only benefits software where the user doesn’t have the source. Any operating system which assumes you have the source will not prioritize it.
(Edit: actually thinking harder MacOS/iOS is actually much worse on binary compatibility, as for example Intel binaries will stop working entirely due to M-cpu transition - Apple just hits developers with a stick to rebuild their apps)
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You can still run x86 binaries on new macbooks. They don't stop working entirely. Using wine I can even run x86 windows binaries.
Yes, and this is a great reason why FreeBSD isn't a popular gaming platform, or for proprietary software in general. I'm not saying this is a bad thing, but... that's why.
> Stable ABI literally only benefits software where the user doesn’t have the source.
It also benefits people who don't want to have to do busywork every time the OS updates.