reentrant functions

[Robin Getz]

On Sun 8 Jun 2008 11:35, Denys Vlasenko pondered:
> On Sunday 08 June 2008 16:21, Bernd Schmidt wrote:
> > Denys Vlasenko wrote:
> > > Ok, this is a scenario: the user runs a "passwd" utility on NOMMU
> > > box. This utility has 20k of text and 80k of data. 70k of this data
> > > is occupied by des.c static buffer.
> > > 
> > > At this moment the machine has only 90k RAM available, has no swap
> > > etc. It cannot satisfy load request for this application.
> > > So user gets some error message from the shell to this effect.
> > > 
> > > If des.c buffer is not static but is __uc_malloc'ed, program will
> > > load succesfully, and then __uc_malloc will fail and exit
> > > with "no memory!" message.
> > > 
> > > In both cases user's experience is essentially the same - [s]he
> > > cannot run the program because there is not enough memory.
> > 
> > Except the program that called crypt may have left some state - 
> > temporary files, partial modifications in other files, whatever - 
> > because it did not expect to fail at this point.
> 
> If this program wants to not be killed by OOM, it needs to install
> the handler for this situation. It is not difficult at all.

The question is not how difficult it is or not.

http://www.uclibc.org/about.html
==== snip =====
 nearly all applications supported by glibc also work perfectly with uClibc. 
Porting applications from glibc to uClibc typically involves just recompiling 
the source code.
==== snip =====

If you are talking about deviating from the "just recompiling" mantra - even 
to handle corner case error conditions, I need to rethink using uClibc going 
forward.

The expectation is functionality as specified in IEEE Std 1003.1
http://www.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/009695399/ 

It seems like more and more functions that you are modifying are deviating 
from the standard, defined interface. I always thought the project goals 
were:
 1) standard functionality
 2) minimum size 

Have things changed so it is the other order? Changing the project goals is 
something I would not support.