Switching from uClibc to glibc as the default in Buildroot?

Khem Raj raj.khem at gmail.com
Wed Feb 19 00:23:11 UTC 2014


Hi Thomas

On Tue, Feb 18, 2014 at 2:14 PM, Thomas Petazzoni
<thomas.petazzoni at free-electrons.com> wrote:
> Hello,
>
> The uClibc project has not released any new version since almost two
> years, despite the fact that there are numerous known issues and
> limitations in 0.9.33.2, and a good set of fixes in the 0.9.33 branch
> that have never been part of any release.
>
> This lack of stable releases is causing major issues for build systems
> such as Buildroot. Not only do we have to carry a large number of
> backported patches to fix uClibc bugs and add missing system calls and
> functionalities needed to run modern software, but we also have issues
> supporting uClibc toolchains provided by other parties (such as
> processor vendors), because they are not using the same set of
> backported patches. The lack of releases is causing fragmentation
> between the various uClibc versions, making uClibc more and more
> painful to support in Buildroot.
>
> To give you an idea, Buildroot currently has more than 50 patches on
> top of uClibc 0.9.33.2:
>
>   http://git.buildroot.net/buildroot/tree/package/uclibc/0.9.33.2/

Indeed, I see what you are saying here. In order to begin the process,
can you send a list of patches
that buildroot is carrying for inclusion into master. Secondly, would
it be just fine if the release is made
in form of a git branch and no tarballs? regardless I would request
all to send/resend the patches that are for master so we can
collect them on patchwork here

http://patchwork.ozlabs.org/project/uclibc/list/

and process can begin.

>
> OpenEmbedded has to use a Git version of uClibc, with a few patches:
>

given the patches and development activity we snapshot uclibc trunk
and that works out ok.

>   https://github.com/openembedded/oe-core/blob/master/meta/recipes-core/uclibc/uclibc-git.inc
>
> OpenWRT also has a good number of patches:
>
>   https://dev.openwrt.org/browser/trunk/toolchain/uClibc/patches-0.9.33.2
>
> We have already asked for stable releases in September 2013 [1], then
> in November 2013 [2], and finally in December 2013 [3], and still no
> release has been made.
>
> Historically, Buildroot was created as a tool to generate small Linux
> systems based on uClibc, in order to test and exercise uClibc. Since
> its origin, Buildroot has had uClibc as its default C library, quite
> certainly helping in propagating uClibc in embedded Linux systems.
>
> However, due to the reasons mentioned above, supporting uClibc has
> proven to be more and more complicated. Therefore, at the latest
> Buildroot Developers Meeting, we discussed the idea of switching to
> using glibc as the default C library in Buildroot for the
> architectures that glibc supports.
>
> But before doing that, we would like to discuss this problem again
> with the uClibc community, and see if something can be done to revive
> the project in terms of delivering releases. Adopting a time-based
> release schedule has proven to work really well for Buildroot, and we
> believe this solution should be considered by the uClibc developers.
>
> Thanks!
>
> Thomas, on behalf of the Buildroot core developers: Peter Korsgaard,
> Yann E. Morin, Samuel Martin, Thomas De Schampheleire.
>
> [1] http://lists.uclibc.org/pipermail/uclibc/2013-September/047942.html
> [2] http://lists.uclibc.org/pipermail/uclibc/2013-November/048029.html
> [3] http://lists.uclibc.org/pipermail/uclibc/2013-December/048102.html
> --
> Thomas Petazzoni, CTO, Free Electrons
> Embedded Linux, Kernel and Android engineering
> http://free-electrons.com


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