Re: support for version-3 format tz binary files

["Joseph S. Myers" <joseph at codesourcery dot com>]

On Wed, 18 Sep 2013, Paul Eggert wrote:

> In the next four messages I'll send patches to document the
> existing glibc support for the new version-3-format tz binary files,
> and to add support for one version-3 feature that's currently missing.
> I haven't tested these changes, unfortunately, as I understand it's
> hard to build and install glibc, but the patches should be
> straightforward.

We fixed the most obvious issues making it hard for new people to build 
glibc some time ago:

* GNU/Linux distribution compilers defaulting to -fstack-protector or 
-D_FORTIFY_SOURCE are automatically handled.

* 32-bit x86 compilers defaulting to -march=i686 work fine instead of 
causing problems with symbol names in .S files containing __i686.

* 32-bit x86 compilers defaulting to -march-i386 produce an error at 
configure time rather than a cryptic link failure.

So, you should ignore any old reputation of being hard to build.  If you 
have actual problems with

(install any needed distribution packages)
/some/where/configure --prefix=/usr --enable-add-ons
make
make check

(beyond any of the known testsuite failures as listed at 
<https://sourceware.org/glibc/wiki/Release/2.18>), the libc-help list can 
help advise on resolving build problems.

In any case, if a submitted patch isn't reviewed within a week or so, then 
please ping it, and keep pinging approximately weekly.  (But people are 
more likely to review if they only need to review, not test as well as 
reviewing.)

I am operating under the presumption the files in timezone/ that (as per 
the README there) come from tzcode should not be updated until this patch 
series is in.

-- 
Joseph S. Myers
joseph@codesourcery.com