Fix Thumb-2 PIEs

Rob Landley rob at landley.net
Tue Dec 9 21:00:36 UTC 2008


On Tuesday 09 December 2008 07:57:13 Joseph S. Myers wrote:
> On Tue, 9 Dec 2008, Bernhard Reutner-Fischer wrote:
> > Joseph, what is the status of the NPTL codesourcery patches, out of
> > curiousity?
>
> I think http://www.uclibc.org/lists/uclibc/2006-December/016907.html (note
> corrections to the patch URL in followups) is still current (i.e., we have
> no more recent patch revisions; in particular, no revisions updated for
> any of my recent Thumb-2 EGLIBC fixes).

Ok, there are some issues to consider about the next release.  I can think of 
three ways forward:

1) The next release is the last one before NPTL, and right afterwards the NPTL 
branch merge starts pouring into mainline.

2) The next release is delayed due to the NPTL merge.

3) The next release contains NPTL but isn't delayed.  It isn't really all that 
tested, either.

The linux kernel guys do a "merge window" thing (with varying degrees of 
success), with the intent of putting all the big changes in at the start of 
the development cycle so they can spend the rest of the time working out the 
ramifications.  Admittedly they're trying to shovel way higher volumes of code 
than this project is, but NPTL is one of the biggest changes uClibc has seen 
in years, so maybe we want to think along those lines?

Right now, there are still two "old" linuxthreads branches in uClibc, and as 
far as I can tell we'll be supporting them in perpetuity.  (For a definition 
of "support" that involves leaving them alone unless somebody complains.)  
Adding NPTL means a third threading branch, which in theory should have minor 
impact on the rest of the code bug in reality involves changes to the dynamic 
linker and shared headers and such.  (How much testing has the 
linuxthreads.old in the NPTL branch gotten?)

I have no idea how any of this will/should work out, that's Bernhard's job.  
But the corrolary to "when will the next release ship" (a question that's been 
dear to my heart for years, sometimes to the point of cake) is "what will the 
next release ship"?

Rob



More information about the uClibc mailing list