Why was the reallocarray function not added to glibc?

[Dennis Wölfing]

On 03.04.2017 17:49, Szabolcs Nagy wrote:
> On 03/04/17 16:21, Dennis Wölfing wrote:
>> The reallocarray function is a useful function that originates from OpenBSD and
>> that checks for overflow when (re)allocating memory. I saw in the mail archives
>> that a patch that implements reallocarray was already contributed in May 2014.
>>
>> Here is the link: https://sourceware.org/ml/libc-alpha/2014-05/msg00481.html
>>
>> However this patch was never applied even though I could not find any real
>> objections in the mail archives.
> 
> it violates iso c and posix namespace rules
> https://sourceware.org/ml/libc-alpha/2014-05/msg00506.html

I think I have fixed the problems with that patch. My changes include:
- Updating the version number in malloc/Versions
- Adding reallocarray to the abilist files
- Wrapping the reallocarray declaration in #ifdef __USE_GNU
- Changing the reallocarray strong_alias into a weak_alias
Now the conform tests (and also the other tests) pass.

However because most of the patch was not written by me I am not sure 
what is the correct way to submit the updated patch.

Of course the patch should include the original ChangeLog entry by 
Rüdiger Sonderfeld. And perhaps I should add another ChangeLog for my 
changes to the abilists. But do I also need to create additional 
ChangeLog entries for files where I just changed a few lines of the 
original patch?

Also the original patch added new testcase file. Should the patch list 
2014-2017 as the copyright date for that file because 2014 is year when 
it was written or should it be changed to say 2017?

>> Is there any reason to not add reallocarray to glibc? If not, should the patch
>> linked above be applied?
>>
>> Dennis Wölfing