Messages in this thread | | | Date | Fri, 9 Jun 2006 16:13:20 +0200 (CEST) | From | Roman Zippel <> | Subject | Re: klibc - another libc? |
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Hi,
On Thu, 8 Jun 2006, H. Peter Anvin wrote:
> > That still doesn't answer, why it has to be distributed with the kernel, > > just install the thing somewhere under /lib and Kbuild can link to it. The > > point is that it contains nothing kernel specific and doesn't has to be > > rebult with every new kernel. > > > > Actually, that isn't quite true. One of the ways klibc is kept small > is by not guaranteeing a stable ABI... and not having compatibility > support for older kernels. This is one of the kinds of luxuries that > bundling offers.
It's indeed more of a luxury than a necessity. How often does that really change? Bundling it with the kernel may actually encourage some developers to be less careful regarding compatibility. We already have enough problems with this as it is.
> Does it make bundling mandatory? Not really. In fact, people have > been using klibc in its standalone form for years. However, I believe > there would be a lot of resistace to have the kernel tarball have > outside dependencies on anything but the most basic build tools.
If you wouldn't remove all old init code at once it would still be possible to build a kernel this way. Why are you making it mandatory? Why don't you leave it optional for a while and only gradually remove the old code? This way distributions/users can experiment with it regarding their current initrd/boot setups.
Why shouldn't klibc be part of the basic build tools? I asked this already earlier: where do you draw the line regarding duplication? Are you going to duplicate every single tool, which might be needed to build the kernel only to reduce outside dependencies? IMO that's illusory for more complex setups anyway. Let's take booting from raid, in this case you need to install mdadm anyway, which could also provide an initramfs version. This way the setup tools can be generated from the same source, which reduces duplication and maintenance overhead.
Just to be clear here, I really appreciate the work you've done, but I'm not exactly comfortable with merging a huge patch, which completely changes the boot sequence at once, without any clear plan of what's coming next. It would be a lot less problematic if the transition would be more gradually, which IMO is very well possible. Usually it's a requirement to split large patches, why should klibc be special?
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