[Y2038] Question about porting y2038-tests to glibc

[Joseph Myers]

On Wed, 4 Nov 2020, Carlos O'Donell via Libc-alpha wrote:

> > It now looks to me that the most feasible solution would be to use
> > ./cross-test-ssh.sh script with QEMU emulated ARM system [1].
> > 
> > I do use there sshfs to mount glibc build directory. In terms of
> > performance it could be replaced with NFS or I could use ssh to execute
> > test program (built with e.g. -static) and get result.
> 
> This is disappointing.
> 
> It is the least appealing option because of the amount of maintenance
> we need to do to keep this option working.
> 
> How do we plan to maintain this solution?

I suspect the complexity of any working solution indicates this is not 
something that should be required to be integrated in glibc for inclusion 
of the Y2038 support - although it's useful for such tests to be run on as 
many architectures as possible to verify the Y2038 support before 
inclusion.

Maybe there should be a separate set somewhere of "tests for glibc 
functionality that modify global system state in a way that means they 
need to be run on a VM and different tests have to be run in series not in 
parallel" (and that includes whatever infrastructure is needed to set up 
such VMs automatically).

-- 
Joseph S. Myers
joseph@codesourcery.com