Re: glibc 2.27: 3 weeks till release

[Carlos O'Donell <carlos at redhat dot com>]

On 01/22/2018 03:58 PM, Rafal Luzynski wrote:
> 12.01.2018 18:14 Joseph Myers <joseph@codesourcery.com> wrote:
>>
>>
>> On Fri, 12 Jan 2018, Rafal Luzynski wrote:
>>
>>>> What's the impact on statically linked applications? Will they continue
>>>> to be able to read both kinds of locale data?
>>>
>>> I have not tried this so I don't know, I assume they will not be able.
>>>
>>> Is it likely that an application linked statically against the new glibc
>>> will read the old locale data and there will be no chance to rebuild
>>> them from sources, or vice versa? Note that the old locale data sources
>>> are valid, the new features are optional.
>>
>> We've previously accepted some incompatibility of compiled locale files
>> with old glibc versions (and thus old statically linked binaries). Note
>> the following in the NEWS file for 2.19:
>>
>> [ ...cut to save the space... ]
>>
>> If the present change affects binary locale compatibility, such a note
>> will be needed in the "Deprecated and removed features, and other changes
>> affecting compatibility:" section of NEWS for 2.27.
> 
> I think that we still need this change in NEWS, don't we?  Will anybody
> please write and commit this?  I have already proved that my English skills
> are insufficient. :-(

Added to release notes for the wiki:
https://sourceware.org/glibc/wiki/Release/2.27#Statically_compiled_applications_using_locales

Added to NEWS.

commit 4378b735efba4a9de3cc9406a9492a823ff2fbf4 (HEAD -> master, origin/master, origin/HEAD)
Author: Carlos O'Donell <carlos@systemhalted.org>
Date:   Tue Jan 23 12:20:01 2018 -0800

    NEWS: Document static application consequenes of %OB/%Ob.

~~~
...
  This feature will cause existing statically compiled applications
  to fail to load locales and fall back to the builtin C/POSIX locales.
  See notes below for other changes affecting compatibility.

Deprecated and removed features, and other changes affecting compatibility:

* Statically compiled applications attempting to load locales compiled for the
  GNU C Library version 2.27 will fail and fall back to the builtin C/POSIX
  locale.  The reason for this is that the addition of the new "%OB" and "%ob",
  support for two grammatical forms of the month names, also extends the locale
  data binary format.  Static applications needing locale support must be
  recompiled to match the runtime and data they are deployed with. In some
  distributions there is an upgrade window where dynamically linked applications
  may use a new library but the old locale data and also fall back to the
  builtin C/POSIX locales; restarting the application process is sufficient to
  fix this.
~~~

-- 
Cheers,
Carlos.