Quote from: Jeff Garzik on July 29, 2010, 2:22:54 PM UTCYeah, some sort of virtual machine like qemu/KVM is really the best way to go, for older distro support.
Just to clear up any (potential) misconception, from the use of the phrase “for older distro support”. Just because you compiled your application with an older distro doesn’t mean it doesn’t work on a newer distro many libraries are backwardly compatible in that way.
When they do change major DSO version (incompatible or breaking changes) some distributions still provide the ability to install the older compat libraries. Its easier for a new distro to find older compat libraries than it is for an older distro to use a newer GLIBC.
Most of what you say is true, but, bitcoin tends to be built against very specific versions of its dependent libs. Due to that, one tends to build bitcoin against custom compiled libs, regardless of underlying OS version. That practice makes glibc the primary compatibility worry.