[Libtirpc-devel] glibc/libtirpc and future of client RPC code

[Thorsten Kukuk]

Hi,

On Fri, Mar 04, Roland McGrath wrote:

> > > src/getrpcent.c: We use the glibc function already if available, don't
> > > know on which OS we compile our own version.
> > 
> > According to commit 489912cad88f musl libc does not provide them.
> > 
> > AFAICT nothing in libtirpc calls these functions. They are provided only
> > for external library consumers. If these functions dip their hands into
> > the YP maps, then maybe they should be removed from glibc and libtirpc
> > and be provided by libnsl instead.
> 
> The existing glibc implementations use the nsswitch mechanism (as IIRC
> these functions do on Solaris).  That can't really be implemented outside
> of libc (unless we add a whole new public API for that).  It may well be
> that nobody really cares about full nsswitch configurability for getrpc*
> and they could be implemented elsewhere (in the new sunrpc library if files
> only, or in the new YP implementation if files + YP/NIS+). 

My first thought was: there is absolute no reason to put
/etc/rpc into LDAP/NIS/ or whatever else, so removing NSS support
and have only a "files" version in libtirpc would be fine with me.

But looking at our customer configurations/feedback, it looks like
quite a lot of companies are still distributiong /etc/rpc via network...
So we should not remove NSS support.

> We certainly
> would prefer to get rid of them from libc altogether along with all sunrpc
> and YP related interfaces.  But if what users need is a new implementation
> of exactly the same functionality the old libc implementation had, then
> that might be difficult.  Fortunately, getrpc* is about the single least
> troublesome thing in this whole mess, so if it just sticks around in libc
> much longer than the rest, that's not really any burden to us.

Looking at the code, I would let rpc/netdb.h and corresponding functions
stay in glibc.

  Thorsten

-- 
Thorsten Kukuk, Senior Architect SLES & Common Code Base
SUSE LINUX GmbH, Maxfeldstr. 5, 90409 Nuernberg, Germany
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