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GNU Libc 2.1.3 Released
Kaz Kylheku writes, "Ulrich Drepper just posted an announcement to the libc-alpha mailing list that the tarballs are out.
This release fixes bugs in diverse areas and improves the stability over last September's glibc-2.1.2 release.
The main archive for this is here and it is sure to
go out to mirrors like wildfire.
Get it, install it, run it---today! "
I've uploaded the 2.1.3 release of glibc to
.gz)
,-. 1325 Chesapeake Terrace ,-------------------' \ Sunnyvale, CA 94089 USA
ftp://sourceware.cygnus.com/pub/glibc/releases
There you can find the files
glibc-2.1.3.tar.bz2 (also
glibc-2.1.2-2.1.3.diff.gz
glibc-linuxthreads-2.1.3.tar.gz
There is no new crypt add-on since it hasn't changed.
This release fixes many bugs in all parts of the library and everybody
is encouraged to update. Preferably through your distribution
provider since compiling glibc yourself means taking a risk unless you
know exactly what you are doing.
This release should be fully compatible (both directions) with glibc
2.1.2. The only part which changed is the format of the files
containing the locale data. This can be easily fixed by running the
`localedef' program for the locales which get used on the system (or
by running `make localedata/install-locales' to update all of them).
--
---------------. drepper at gnu.org
Ulrich Drepper \
Red Hat `--' drepper at redhat.com `------------------------
You might consider picking up the small, free Cygnus C library as a foundation. It is intended for embedded use, and is also the foundation for the Cygwin Unix emulation for win32. Thus, it should be both light weight and relatively complete.
The GNU C library is used on Linux and Hurd, and earlier versions also worked on SunOS. This was useful back when Sun didn't have an ANSI compliant C library.
It implements many standards, apart from ANSI/ISO C also various Posix and Open Group standards.
It will never be completely debugged, since both the standards and the underlying OS'es keep changing.
It is written in GNU C.
It's effect on performance depends on what you do. It can range from "none" to the only significant factor, depending on how much your application uses library functions.
TO answer your question: most operating systems implement their own C library because they are proprietary. The developers of one OS do not cooperate with those of another OS.
The GNU Libc does support operating systems other than Linux; it is compilable across multiple architectures.
There is a lot of stuff other than standard C that is implemented; a library for a UNIX-like system must implement the POSIX interfaces as well as The Single UNIX Specification.
A C library is typically written using the C language, but with platform-specific extensions and tricks. Obviously, the system call mechanism that is used to interface with the system can't be written in C. Certain assumptions about the hardware are made here and there. (Consider implementing stuff like , or printf conversions, etc).
C libraries are not fully debugged after years of development because they are large, and the standards are moving targets. In the case of glibc, it's actually not that old. From what I understand, glibc2 is a rewrite of glibc1.
I suspect that proprietary libc's are more stable because they have been around longer. But they acquire new bugs when they implement new UNIX features.
The quality of a library implementation is critical to system stability, and in some cases performance as well. Obviously, those library funtions that are basically thin wrappers around operating system calls don't impact performance much. On the other hand, there are areas where optimizations can make a huge difference: things that come to mind are DNS resolver functions, the stuff in .
I understand that the priority needs to be a stable C library, and that the other stuff is really so much frippery, when you get right down to it. On the other hand, I would find it almost impossible to imagine two fairly significant bits of code requiring -NO- updates or touches for such a large leap in versions.
I've not plowed through the entire 2.1.3 sources to see how much of this old code they've simply rolled in, but I don't see any READMEs or notices in the glibc directory declaring the files as obsolete, either.
This is NOT a complaint. Ok, well, maybe it is. I simply think it'd be nice if related software could be kept in sync, with either versioning or notices stating that.
PS: Last distro to upgrade is a rotten LinuxOne!
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
A month after Debian freezes, we're seeing long-awaited major new revisions of various pieces of software (libc being the least notable) Did one of the founders of Debian anger the gods of the Internet or something? :-)
/usr/share/doc/libc/README.Debian.gz makes a lot of comments about 'new CVS checkout', so this might not be far from where we are..
Luckily, the package-pools stuff will supposedly get this stuff into a 'semi-stable' distribution posthaste, although I'd be a little nervous about throwing a new libc in. [1]
Daniel
[1] OTOH,
Hurry up and jump on the individualist bandwagon!
However, all of that massive feature-set support and backwards compatibility and cross-kernel compatibility incurs a cost; doing a stat() is no longer just a system call, but instead has to pass through a layer of glibc code to convert whatever the kernel's struct stat du jour is to the glibc "standard" format. And symbol versioning, while extremely useful, adds complexity and latency to the start-up of processes which link against glibc (i.e. EVERYONE).
Linus has commented a few timees that glibc is a little too heavyweight for his tastes; others have noted that, while the Linux kernel's fork() rate and latency are incredible, it's the ld.so complexity and latency that kills us on exec()s.
I have often pondered a project to parallel glibc, called "tlibc" - the Thin C Library. This library would have to be compiled against the kernel it expects to run against; what's more, apps would then have to be compiled against the newly compiled tlibc, because it only guarantees source-compatibility (and that only so long as kernel interface structures don't change in fascinating and difficult-to-handle ways).
Sure, it would be a PITA to develop such a system, but imagine it in the context of a distribution... let the applications come as close to the "raw iron" of the kernel as possible to eek that extra 3% performance out of Apache/Samba/etc. Remember, most production systems pick a distribution and stick with it, WITHOUT DOING ANY NON-SECURITY UPGRADES, for a long time. This could actually be plausible.
Then again, maybe it's just pipe dream. I dunno.
Oh, I don't mind bugfixes at all.. I love them, in fact.
The problem is, upgrading a Red Hat 5.x box to glibc 2.1 (now standard in Slack 7) is impractical, because of the soname issue. (libc.so.6 vs. libc.so.6). If Red Hat had heeded the glibc unstable warning, in the same way they heed the kernel unstable warnings (2.2.x vs 2.3.x), I'd be happy.
You see, since Slackware stuck with libc.so.5, upgrading to glibc 2.1 is relatively painless (the transition can be made gradually, first with new apps, then recompiling/reinstalling the older stuff), because the sonames are different.
Glibc developers aren't to blame, because they left the soname the same, while breaking binary compatibility. You weren't supposed to be using the unstable library in a production box, anyway. Red Hat just got too "cool" and jumped the gun, in the same way they loaded on GNOME far before it was really ready for use (October GNOME).
This reminds me of the inflammatory emails linux-kernel gets, when people whine that some internal structure changed, and that linux will never be "professionally trusted" if they keep breaking things.
Hey, the glibc people WARNED the world that glibc 2.0 was unstable.
It's not their fault, like you make it out to be, that distributions like Redhat included glibc 2.0, only to find out that glibc 2.1 broke binary compatibility.
Stick with Slackware if you want to avoid that sort of problem. Everyone snickered at Slackware, saying "it's so backward" because it didn't "upgrade" to the new, unstable library...
Now the glibc 2.1 series is out, marked "stable", Slackware is fine, and the Red Hat 5.x boxes are having problems with libc.so.6 (from glibc 2.0) not working like libc.so.6 (from glibc.2.1). Who's snickering now?
Hey,
:-D
Please set your system clock to todays date. We can not allow people to download tomorrows software today
Seriously, it seems as if there is a version numbering problem....
This post is perfectly valid! /. otherwise I think they belong to freshmeat.
AC is suggesting in two words that this whole article belongs to freshmeat.org.
I do actually agree! I want to see XFree86 4.0 and other major releases on
The "troll" moderation is grossly unfair and I would like to point people that do moderation to sid=moderation
no support for shared libraries
all your foo.so files are ELF, as are the executables that use them
.a files IIRC are pre-compiled statically linkable binaries, in a.out format
We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars --Oscar Wilde
Grrr. my nick is "Forward the Light Brigade"...
$ rpm -qa | grep libc
glibc-devel-2.1.3-6
compat-glibc-5.2-2.0.7.1
libc-5.3.12-31
quake2-3.20-glibc-6
glibc-2.1.3-6
And I haven't even downloaded anything today!
See you, space cowboy...
The GNU C library (version 2) only supports Linux and Hurd as kernels, as far as I know. Some README file somewhere says that porting it to other OSes should be an easy task, but it looks like it hasn't been done.
to the GNU libc team.
Writing a libc is a horribly fastidious job. Perhaps not as technically hard as writing a C compiler like gcc, but probably far more tedious. Making everything reentrant, maintaining nitty-gritty compatibility with the standards, trying hard not to break everything with each release, this is a very hard job. Remember, for one thing that the headers must compile with gcc -O6 -Wall -ansi -pedantic -W -Wstrict-prototypes -Wcast-qual -Wpointer-arith -Wwrite-strings and this isn't really obvious. Also consider the important aspect of namespace pollution which must be avoided at all costs.
The GNU libc is a fantastic thing. It beats the hell out of the old libc5, which I found mostly worthless. It does a wonderful job of respecting the standards (just look at the features.h header file for an idea) while at the same time providing its own features when they seem useful. And it is very efficient. The documentation is very good, also (very complete, while at the same time very readable; and lots of examples too), even though I detest this texinfo format.
Also remember that a good part of the GNU Hurd is actually in the libc, since it takes care of communicating with the daemons of the Hurd and providing the interfaces (representing depth) that simulate Unix behavior.
ELF symbol versioning is another great thing that was introduced with version 2.1 of the libc. Not to mention things like IPv6 support and so on. In fact, I find that the libc is definitely ahead of the kernel (consider the case of the getcontext() function, which the libc has support for, but tthe kernel is still lacking.
The GNU libc plays an essential role in making our OS what it is. It gets far less attention than the kernel (because of its “cathedral” development model), but it is just as important (remember: a well-written program never sees the kernel, it only sees the libc; the libc is what keeps Unix united, and it can even achieve binary compatibility), and the GNU libc programmers certainly deserve praise for what they are writing.
So, congratulations to Andreas Jaeger, Ulrich Drepper and all the others.
There's one bug in particular that I'd like to see fixed, but I don't know how prevalent of a thing it is...*shurgs*
fork() is/was broken in 2.1.0, 2.1.1 and 2.1.2 for the specific app that it's being used for, and the manner that it's being used is consistent with how it's supposed to work (IIRC).
*shrug*
basically: in the case where an app forks off a child process, then returns, and then has another child process fork()'d (each process running the same external app), is it still freezing/not returning from the child cleanly?
That seems to be the bahaviour, at any rate...
(source code for the app can be provided for testing of this behaviour).
-----------
"You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."
The reason I argued the point, was because there's an obvious trend on Slashdot now for posting software releases. I think those releases *deserve* their own section, in the same sense that BSD and Apache do. I'd like to be able to create a slashbox for new releases, so I can go discuss them. They have a place on Slashdot, but I don't think it's mixed in with all the other stuff.
-----------
"You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."
It's sad that ANY comment could conceivably fit each category
-----------
"You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."
Gotcha...
I fully agree with what you think are major releases, and I also don't really think that the Stampede code freeze qual'd as 'major'... once it is actually released, maybe... Like "1.0 released today", rather than ".90 coming Any Week Now(TM)"... Considering that you *need* a c lib to build Linux, I'd consider this pretty major... anything that you *need* to run (some people don't need X, but..) Linux/BSD/Foonix/BarSD 8^) Not like "I *need* pine, and version umdiddlysquat.whoosymawhatchis.whatchmacallit is out - YAY!", but legit components of the system.
My point was that even a 'minor' version increment for glibc is rather *major*... the previous updates were:
2.0.6 12/29/97
2.1.1 5/25/99
2.1.2 9/7/99
2.1.3 2/25/00
Not really an everyday sort of thing... I think it deserves a post here. That's all.
Minor is tougher to define, but I think it's safe to say that it is anything that isn't 'major' 8^D
Or whatever...
"It's tough to be bilingual when you get hit in the head."
1) People complaining that announcements should be on Freshmeat, leave them there...
/. , since that certainly falls in the news for nerds that should be widely spoken... I also have problems with the amount of 'no good for anything I do' programs on freshmeat, though I'm very happy that a resource like that is there... but I won't check it every day... or even every week, since most of it just doesn't apply... /. Maybe they should be a section that you can opt out of, but by default, they should be shown.
2) People complaining about those people, saying that 99% of the stuff on Freshmeat doesn't apply to them, but major releases like libc, XFree, Kernels, do, so keep listing it here...
3) People complaining about troll moderation for #1
4) More complaining that we should have a new section for these sorts of things...
5) People complaining that this isn't new...
6) People complaining about all of the complaints 8^)
and soon...
7) People complaining about me 8^)
I maintain that kernel releases, major X announcements, and other key components (GCC, Glibc, etc) should be announced on
Major announcements should be done on
Even though this is a x.x.1 increase, it *has* been quite some time, and *is* a fairly major step. If every day we got the libc-digest posted here, I'd start to worry, but if the last update was in September, and this interval is too often for you to handle it... (you're creative enough to figure out what I was thinking here, I'll bet)
"It's tough to be bilingual when you get hit in the head."
On Freshmeat, there is rarely any meaningful discussion of software announcements, especially regarding essential components of the system as glibc. There is, however, a plethora of meaningful discussion and insight on Slashdot about important software releases that one is unable to find on Freshmeat. I know I am pleased to find an outlet for mine and others' ideas regarding various things such as X and kernels that, if posted in in Reply to an article regarding, say, Privacy, would be moderated down as Offtopic and consequently not seen by anyone.
Chris Hagar
"The price of freedom is eternal vigilance." - Thomas Jefferson
I, like you and unlike others here, don't believe that software upgrades should only be posted on Freshmeat; the occasional upgrade is very nice to have here, where it has a better chance of getting a more lively discussion if people would actually TALK ABOUT THE SOFTWARE rather than complaining that it doesn't belong here. Almost no one posts comments on freshmeat. If fm had a more interesting and populous forum, I would also prefer to leave upgrades there.
/.er who stated that people who anticipate and acknowledge that they will probably be moderated down should get what they ask for. Don't ruin an otherwise insightful post by claiming to be some kind of martyr.
Note however, that if I still had my moderator status, I would have moderated you right down to 0 from 1 where you are already. I very much agree with the other
JD
Even very stable releases of GLIBC can cause major problems when you upgrade wantonly. This is the one package (for RedHat users) that shouldn't be upgraded unless you really do know what you are doing. I would be *very* cautious until vendors start including it in things like RawHide.
:-)
The issue is that almost all programs on your system depend on glibc. This is about the only library about which such is true. Also the glibc people are infamous for binary (and hell, source too) incompatibility...even between minor versions. In addition it sounds like most of the gains are stability. If you end up screwing your system over...you haven't increased stability much, eh?
Just watch out
-nullity-
I am nothing.
Someone inform me. Why do most operating systems implement their own C library? Is glibc compile-able across multiple architectures? Is it merely standard C that is implemented in these libraries or is there a lot of other stuff that needs to be implemented? What is a C library written in? Why are they not fully-debugged after years of development? Are some implementations better than others? How much does the quality of an implementation impact system performance?
Honest questions.
-troll taker
Come on.
:P
/.
/. for about a year and these have always been here and I like them and its just a part of /. sooo stop it :p
/. has been posting software upgrades like this for all eternity. I mean they dont report things like Frog0.0.1 First Release
I happen to enjoy reading about what others have to say on the software that is "important" to the community. glibc IS important
Ive learned a WHOLE lot by what other people have said here at
Please do not go bashing saying this belongs at FM
Been reading