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Re: glibc on solaris


On Thu, 2007-02-15 at 22:18 +0100, Petr Salinger wrote: 
> >> I think it worked once upon a time.  However, now it is extremely
> >> Linux specific; I think it would be a tremendously difficult project.
> 
> > What's Linux specific about Glibc?
> 
> The pthreads add-ons (both nptl and linuxthreads) are rather linux specific.

Possibly, I admit I have no knowledge of either threads package. On
Syllable we build with thread support enabled but have kernel threads
and provide our own simple Pthreads library outside of Glibc. Provided
that Glibc never relies directly on NPTL this arrangement should suffice
for future versions.

> Also core glibc becomes more and more Linux specific,
> i.e. *at functions and now also indirectly futexes :-(

Linux-specific code in the generic functions is certainly an issue, yes.
Doubly so for platforms where the porter does not have control over the
target kernel.

I note that the Glibc page at http://www.gnu.org/software/libc/ and the
documentation describes Glibc as portable ("The GNU C library is written
to be easily portable to a variety of machines and operating systems.")
That would appear to be in conflict which the reality of Glibc as it is
currently.

> > FreeBSD and Syllable kernels in addition to Linux.
> > My patches for Glibc 2.4 on Syllable only run into a couple of hundred
> > lines, plus platform sources. There are some areas that occasionally
> > give me headaches I.e. requiring TLS support, but they are not
> > insurmountable.
> 
> Our glibc 2.5.x for GNU/kFreeBSD needs fewer changes,
> to get an estimate, for patches see
> http://svn.debian.org/wsvn/glibc-bsd/trunk/glibc-ports/patches/
> and for platform sources
> http://svn.debian.org/wsvn/glibc-bsd/trunk/glibc-ports/kfreebsd/

Likewise ours for 2.4
http://syllable.cvs.sourceforge.net/syllable/syllable/system/apps/utils/Builder/packages/glibc-2.4/glibc-2.4.patch?revision=1.2&view=markup
and platform sources
http://syllable.cvs.sourceforge.net/syllable/syllable/system/apps/utils/Builder/packages/glibc-2.4/patches/

The only thing currently holding us back from 2.5 is the lack of TLS
support in our RTLD (Another Glibc component we do not use)

> > I agree that it is difficult, certainly a lot of work, but not
> > impossible.
> 
> I absolutely agree with this.
> 
> But do not expect any help from Ulrich Drepper on _unsupported_ platform ...

No, I've discovered.

-- 
Vanders
http://www.syllable.org
http://www.liqwyd.com


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