alt Hacker NewsLet me rewind this to the top of the thread.
> What is the advantage of doing so?
To which I responded
> Operating systems.
To which you said
> That's not how it works basically anywhere
I think we have reached the point in the thread where you concede that yes, there is somewhere where it's how it works and yes it does apply to languages that aren't C/C++.
So now you're shifting the goalposts and topic to
> almost nobody ships software via the OS today.
That was never something I was trying to debate. The topic was "why would you want ABI stability". And the answer is that if I wanted to rewrite coreutils in rust, then it'd be really useful to have synchronized crates with a stable ABI so I could potentially update those crates independent of the apps that depend on them.
I agree that sometimes other languages are packaged this way as well, and maybe I was moving the goalposts. My original meaning was that only for C/C++ (on Linux) the recommended method of distribution is via the OS, while other languages have their own mediums (not requiring stable ABIs). So when they are packaged like that that's mostly because the OS itself or its services need them.