Three more days left before the 2.30 release...

Mark Wielaard mark@klomp.org
Fri Jan 26 19:16:00 GMT 2018


Hi Nick,

On Fri, 2018-01-26 at 17:51 +0000, Nick Clifton wrote:
>   Right, well given how close we are to the deadline for the 2.30
>   release, and the fact that it does not look like this issue is
>   going to be resolved quickly, I am going to have to make an
>   executive decision.
> 
>   I am going to stay with the sources as they are for now.

I appreciate that you'll have to make a decision to fix things or keep
the existing code because it is too close to release time. It is
ultimately your decision. But...

>   Sorry
>   Mark, but I without any concrete proof of broken tools, I am
>   going to trust that H.J.'s change will work out in the long run.

I think this is not really fair. It should be on the person proposing a
new, incompatible, format to argue for why it is essential, not on the
people having to fix the tools to support the new format, to proof such
a breaking change is necessary.

I have been raising this issue since at least November last year on
various gnu-abi/gabi lists. I believe the consensus has always been
that changing the GNU ELF notes format after 20 years is just asking
for trouble. That is also what people said reviewing H.J.'s binutils
and glibc patches. It complicates anything dealing with ELF notes since
there are now suddenly multiple different formats to support.

Also it is fairly easy to show "concrete proof" of broken tools. H.J.
had to patch binutils itself, glibc and the linux kernel to just parse
the alternative format. I have fixed some things in elfutils to at
least not break when seeing bogus data in a SHT_NOTES section (eu-
readelf would just barf and exit on a broken ELF note). But still will
have to update libelf to be able to parse the new format. And I don't
think it is about the tools we know about. The ELF format is so widely
used, and people have been depending on the GNU ELF note format for so
many years that it is just a game of whack-a-mole that will take
multiple years before we even know everything that is broken and has to
be adapted to deal with multiple formats now.

>   There will always be an opportunity for a 2.30.1 release to 
>   correct this decision, if that turns out to be how PR 22749 is
>   resolved.  But for the 2.30 release we are going with the sources
>   as they are now.

OK. Hopefully we can fix things so there is just one GNU ELF note
format for 2.30.1 and hopefully in the meantime nobody adopts the
alternative .note.gnu.property format. Otherwise we still have to deal
with multiple formats in the future.

Cheers,

Mark



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