Re: glibc at the Toolchains microconference at LPC 2019

[Florian Weimer <fweimer at redhat dot com>]

* Zack Weinberg:

> On Wed, Jun 26, 2019 at 12:39 PM Dmitry V. Levin <ldv@altlinux.org> wrote:
>> On Wed, Jun 26, 2019 at 06:01:28PM +0200, Florian Weimer wrote:
>> > glibc system call wrappers are on the agenda:
>> >
>> > <https://www.linuxplumbersconf.org/blog/2019/toolchains-microconference-accepted-into-2019-linux-plumbers-conference/>
>> >
>> > Will anyone from the glibc community attend and can set the right
>> > expectations?
>>
>> What are the right expectations?
>
> Well, _I_ think glibc should provide wrappers for all Linux system
> calls, except those that cannot be used without stomping on internal
> glibc data structures (e.g. set_tid_address, set_robust_list, brk) and
> those that have been completely superseded by newer syscalls.  Other
> people have disagreed with me pretty strenuously, but they haven't
> done any of the work required to make forward progress on their more
> conservative policies.  I am tempted to post a patch early in the 2.31
> cycle that adds wrappers for everything, and then threaten to apply it
> unilaterally unless I hear concrete objections within a week or so.

In my experience, it's been difficult to get reviewers.  So what the
project says it wants and what the project actually makes happen is
rather different.

There is currently a requirement that every wrapper needs a manual entry
(and, presumably, a test case, although I have not tested the waters on
that).  membarrier is not included only because we could not agree on
the manual text.

Thanks,
Florian