Maintaining libio (was: Re: [PATCH v2 1/2] libio: Multiple fixes for open_{w}memstram (BZ#18241 and BZ#20181))

[Zack Weinberg]

On Wed, Apr 19, 2017 at 5:17 AM, Florian Weimer <fweimer@redhat.com> wrote:
> I'm leaning towards a clean break: Stop installing <libio.h>.  Remove all
> symbols related to external vtable support (i.e., an ABI break, so that
> affected programs fail in a clean manner).  Do this now, and revisit it for
> glibc 2.27 if someone actually has an application that breaks due to this.

I had been thinking about proposing a patch to stop installing
libio.h, myself.  It definitely is getting in the way of forward
progress.

However, stdio in general could use a great deal of revision, and we
don't want to break compatibility several releases in a row.  Maybe it
makes more sense to start in on a "revise stdio" project on a branch,
but not merge any breaking changes until it's completely ready to go?
Meanwhile, on trunk, we could make stdio.h stop including libio.h and
add a deprecation warning to libio.h -- that should be enough to flush
out applications that still need it, and find out what exactly they
need.

(I wish I had time to help with a stdio overhaul, but realistically I don't.)

zw