Linux Plumbers Conference: GNU Tools Track: glibc BoF (notes)

[Carlos O'Donell]

2021-09-22: glibc BoF at the GNU Tools track at Linux Plumbers Conference.

https://linuxplumbersconf.org/event/11/contributions/1019/

I spoke briefly about:

Upcoming release: glibc 2.35 relase on February 1st 2022.
Open topics?
Patch review: Retrospective on 10 months of patch queue review?
Patch review: How do we make consensus easier for patch review and commit?
Feature: Are we ready for the ppc64le long double change in downstream?
CI/CD: Status of patchwork CI/CD? - format.useAutoBase came up.

These are my notes from the BoF.

Feature: Are we ready for the ppc64le long double change in downstream?
- libgfortran needs to be discussed for ppc64le to transition to long double.
- Jonathan Wakely: Open libstdc++ bug that needs fixing.

Patch review: Retrospective on 10 months of patch queue review?
- We aren't making through the patch review.
- Are we making it through the patch queue.
- Refocus on the queue for review. ****

Frangrui Song: Will glibc be happy with Clang buildability?
- Carlos: Yes, we could be happy with clang buildability.
- Florian: We may need nested functions to get away from relocations in bootstrap.
- Joseph: Patches should be split into logical changes.

Joseph Myers: Could we do better bugzilla triage?
- Bug queue review is a process.
- Yes, we need to clean up our process and do something weekly.
- Segher: gcc hooks to log commits against bugs help.
- Carlos: The switch to the adacore hooks broke this. Fix this. ****
- Michael: Keep the bug open until I do the backport.
- Patrick: Put a comment in the bug when you're going to move the bug downstream.
- Florian: Needs to close the bugs for the NEWS file generation logic.

Jeff Law: Explicit loader invocations result in different memory layout.
- Florian: Yes, it's a kernel issue, and ASLR defaults impact this.
  - We have seen this in the past.
  - More explicit loader invocations will happen because env-vars 
    have their own issues.
- Changes in memory layout should not impact things due to ASLR.

Florian Weimer: Mailing list and from rewriting
- Annoying issues with git-am and patchwork.
- Formal request for a change in configuration via overseers.
- Nick Alcock: The rule is don't change anything.
- The only way to avoid from rewriting is to allow all email.
- Refuse mail that contains html? Troublesome dropped email that they are rejected.
- Send back an SMTP rejection code, and bouncing is a source of spray (problem).
- Spam? Handled by spam filtering.
- Overseers: Request to stop rewriting email, and allow all email to the list.
- Mark: Talk to Frank and cgf.
- Can you use b4 with libc-alpha?
  - Yes, if you can point b4 at libc-alpha on public-inbo

-- 
Cheers,
Carlos.