The community wiki for glibc
The official and canonical glibc links are http://www.gnu.org/software/libc/ and http://sources.redhat.com/glibc
This wiki is a community effort and *none* of the information contained herein is considered official.
Some of the following information is taken verbatim from http://www.gnu.org/software/libc/.
Contents
Overview
Any Unix-like operating system needs a C library: the library which defines the "system calls" and other basic facilities such as fopen, malloc, printf, exit...
The GNU C library is used as the C library in the GNU system and most systems with the Linux kernel.
History
The history of Unix and various standards determine much of the interface of the C library. In general the GNU C library supports the ISO C and POSIX standards. We also try to support the features of popular Unix variants (including BSD and System V) when those do not conflict with the standards. Different compatibility modes (selectable when you compile an application) allow the peaceful coexistence of compatibility support for different varieties of Unix.
Project Goals
The GNU C library is primarily designed to be a portable and high performance C library.
It follows all relevant standards (ISO C 99, POSIX.1c, POSIX.1j, POSIX.1d, Unix98, Single Unix Specification). It is also internationalized and has one of the most complete internationalization interfaces known.
Project Features
- POSIX Threading
A History of Threading in GLIBC (todo) - Describes the GLIBC version history of POSIX NPTL as well as mutex and futex constructs.
- ... and more!
Obtaining the Official Source
The Sourceware GLIBC webpage contains instructions on obtaining the official sources for the latest GLIBC release. You can obtain official tarballs from the standard location, ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/glibc/.
Source snapshots are available from ftp://sources.redhat.com/pub/glibc/snapshots/.
Contributing
If you wish to contribute to glibc please post your idea or patch to libc-help@sourceware.org for initial review.
Before emailing libc-alpha@sourceware.org for final review please go through the contribution checklist to guarantee that you meet the legal, coding standards, testing, and documentation requirements for the project.
Failure to meet these requirements will result in moderation rejection of your libc-alpha email.
GLIBC has maintainers for each architecture. Please CC them on any libc-alpha emails related to the architecture of your interest.
For help subscribing to the mailing-lists, simply send an empty e-mail to libc-help-info@sourceware.org or libc-alpha-info@sourceware.org
FAQ
Consult the glibc FAQ for common questions and answers.
Development
- The IRC channel is on Freenode at #glibc.
How to version a structure and create a change-proof function wrapper.
- Development Todo
Internals Documentation
(TODO: should extend 
move this to a subpage)
PTR_MANGLE & friends: http://udrepper.livejournal.com/13393.html
Issue Tracking
Do you want to help with GLIBC? The GLIBC Bug Triage initiative is a great way to get involved.
If you think the glibc bugzilla version selection drop-down is missing a version number, please contact libc-help < libc-help@sourceware.org >.
If you think that bugs aren't being fixed fast enough or that new features aren't being implemented fast enough, please take the time to read this email http://sourceware.org/ml/libc-help/2008-08/msg00009.html
Testing
Debugging
Tips and Tricks
Another recipe for intercepting syscalls and providing your own version of FOO (instructions specifically for Ubuntu Linux systems).
The Plash project has some hints about glibc (mainly about build issues).
rtldi can be used to install multiple versions of glibc simultaneously (specifically, multiple versions of the dynamic linker, ld.so)
Project Wishlist by Developer
If you are looking for a glibc project this is the place to start.
Misc
Feedback and GLIBC Wiki FAQ - Leave a question about GLIBC here and a developer may answer it.
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