PROJECTS

   1 Open jobs for finishing GNU libc:
   2 ---------------------------------
   3 Status: January 1997
   4
   5 If you have time and talent to take over any of the jobs below please
   6 contact <bug-glibc@prep.ai.mit.edu>
   7
   8 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
   9 \f
  10 [ 1] Port to new platforms or test current version on formerly supported
  11      platforms.
  12
  13 **** See http://www.gnu.org/software/libc/porting.html for more details.
  14
  15
  16 [ 2] Test compliance with standards.  If you have access to recent
  17      standards (IEEE, ISO, ANSI, X/Open, ...) and/or test suites you
  18      could do some checks as the goal is to be compliant with all
  19      standards if they do not contradict each other.
  20
  21
  22 [ 3] Write translations for the GNU libc message for the so far
  23      unsupported languages.  GNU libc is fully internationalized and
  24      users can immediately benefit from this.
  25
  26      Take a look at the matrix in
  27         ftp://prep.ai.mit.edu/pub/gnu/ABOUT-NLS
  28      for the current status (of course better use a mirror of prep).
  29
  30
  31 [ 4] Write wordexp() function; this is described in POSIX.2, the
  32      header <wordexp.h> already exists.
  33
  34      Implementation idea: use some functions from bash.
  35
  36 **** Somebody is working on this.  Help may or may not be appreciated.
  37
  38
  39 [ 5] Write `long double' versions of the math functions.  This should be
  40      done in collaboration with the NetBSD and FreeBSD people.
  41
  42      The libm is in fact fdlibm (not the same as in Linux libc).
  43
  44 **** Partly done.  But we need someone with numerical experiences for
  45      the rest.
  46
  47
  48 [ 6] If you enjoy assembler programming (as I do --drepper :-) you might
  49      be interested in writing optimized versions for some functions.
  50      Especially the string handling functions can be optimized a lot.
  51
  52      Take a look at
  53
  54         Faster String Functions
  55         Henry Spencer, University of Toronto
  56         Usenix Winter '92, pp. 419--428
  57
  58      or just ask.  Currently mostly i?86 and Alpha optimized versions
  59      exist.  Please ask before working on this to avoid duplicate
  60      work.
  61
  62
  63 [ 7] Write nftw() function.  Perhaps it might be good to reimplement the
  64      ftw() function as well to share most of the code.
  65
  66 **** Almost done!
  67
  68
  69 [ 8] Write AVL-tree based tsearch() et.al. functions.  Currently only
  70      a very simple algorithm is used.
  71      There is a public domain version but using this would cause problems
  72      with the assignment.
  73
  74
  75 [ 9] Extend regex and/or rx to work with wide characters and complete
  76      implementation of character class and collation class handling.
  77
  78      It is planed to do a complete rewrite.
  79
  80
  81 [10] Write access function for netmasks, bootparams, and automount
  82      databases for nss_files and nss_db module.
  83      The functions should be embedded in the nss scheme.  This is not
  84      hard and not all services must be supported at once.
  85
  86
  87 [11] Rewrite utmp/wtmp functions to use database functions.  This is much
  88      better than the normal flat file format.
  89
  90 **** There are plans for a new approach to this problem.  Please contact
  91      bug-glibc@prep.ai.mit.edu before starting to work.)
  92
  93
  94 [12] Several more or less small functions have to be written:
  95
  96      + tcgetid() and waitid()                   from XPG4.2
  97      + grantpt(), ptsname(), unlockpt()         from XPG4.2
  98      + getdate()                                from XPG4.2
  99      + fmtmsg()                                 from SVID
 100
 101      More information are available on request.