Debian is switching back to GLIBC

http://blog.aurel32.net/175

by tshepang • 12 years ago

179 60 12 years ago

blog.aurel32.net

This seems like a very similar situation to egcs and gcc: a fork created because the original project proved too painful to work with, and folded back in after sorting out the project governance issues that caused the fork in the first place.

plorkyeran• 12 years ago

It's not quite as drastic: with egcs they basically just killed gcc and renamed egcs, while here it was more of a merger of the projects. Very similar, though.

gumby• 12 years ago

They are in a funny way opposite (and I certainly know whereof I speak: look at who wrote this message [0]).

It's hard to remember, but back in 1997 forking was considered really terrible and to be avoided at all costs. When we split off to form egcs the main resistance was to the idea that there would be a fork at all. Gcc, and a bunch of other programs, had a single person who controlled the "official" release. The fact that Cygnus maintained its own release tree for its customers (it was still free -- it simply wasn't identical to the mainline, and in fact advanced a lot faster) was the cause of much angst and even some mistrust.

My reason for making this fork was because the mainline was so far behind us, and we had a commitment to folding all our changes back into the main line. Since the gcc maintainer was the bottleneck, we simply declared our tree a new fork with the support and participation of other major developers. We were trying to be the opposite of exclusivist. But even so it took me months of mailing, calling and negotiating. Many hours on the phone with rms who of course predicted the doom of free software if we went ahead.

And we developed a steering committee, the first as far as I know for a free software project.

In those two ways egcs was a watershed; plenty of developers thankfully now know no other way.

So last year glibc went the opposite way: it decided it no longer needed a steering committee. Cool!

[0] https://gcc.gnu.org/news/announcement.html

vezzy-fnord2• 12 years ago

Odd. I had always been convinced that they switched back to glibc again a while ago, but it seems they're beginning to do it only now.

A lot of people are against forks that they deem frivolous or unnecessary, but I think it's one of the most pragmatic and important parts of free software. It's a failsafe, a Second Amendment, if you will.

opinionperson• 12 years ago

whats a debian?

nemasu• 12 years ago

I think it's a type of penguin?

IvyMike• 12 years ago

I was unaware that drepper had left redhat (and glibc).

He's now at Goldman Sachs.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/ulrichdrepper

general_failure• 12 years ago

Such great news. He was single handedly impeding the project.

jedisct1• 12 years ago

So, does glibc provide strlcat() yet?

Crito• 12 years ago

"Ulrich left Red Hat for Goldman Sachs some time ago. It's part of an ongoing plan to punish bankers for their role in the 2008 financial crisis."

http://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/zzhd9/strfry_the_gnu_...

ciansa• 12 years ago

Maybe be was a plant, and ensured attack vectors into linux by controlling and ensuring bugs in libc

awda• 12 years ago

It happened several years ago.

beedogs• 12 years ago

He'll fit right in with all the other sociopaths there.

Florin_Andrei2• 12 years ago

I was unaware that drepper had left redhat (and glibc).
He's now at Goldman Sachs.

A much better fit for both parties, from a cultural / personality perspective.

chengiz• 12 years ago

Some strong comments against Drepper. What's the back story here?

damncabbage• 12 years ago

He was the lead maintainer for glibc that people ended up needing to work around rather than with:

https://sourceware.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=4403

https://sourceware.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=5070

https://sourceware.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=5531

kawsper• 12 years ago

This one too: https://sourceware.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=4980

StillBored• 12 years ago

Another one

https://sourceware.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=4350

Florin_Andrei2• 12 years ago

At least one of those was opened by the author of the blog page posted by the OP here (aurel32).

brohee2• 12 years ago

http://goodliffe.blogspot.com/2008/10/madness-of-glibc.html

Tarballs are a completely outdated concept.

davidgerard• 12 years ago

http://newstechnica.com/2009/05/07/debian-forks-glibc-over-d... [cn]

mrmondo• 12 years ago

Anyone got another link? I'm getting "Error establishing a database connection"

sharth• 12 years ago

Here's a screengrab: http://i.imgur.com/XUNBIh1.png

chrismonsanto• 12 years ago

Cache: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:VrGJCG7...

cryptonector• 12 years ago

Drepper's is a caustic personality. IIRC he's the reason that Linux has pre-linking instead of Solaris'direct binding, and so on.

malkia• 12 years ago

Can you share some details about this - like pros & cons once vs. another?

captainmuon• 12 years ago

Wow, Debian (and by extension Ubuntu) has been using eglibc for five years and I haven't noticed?

I even compiled new versions of gcc + glibc (and installed them into $HOME, to run new binaries on older installations). You think I should have noticed that there was no glibc on the host system to begin with. But actually, the only thing I noticed is that the glibc (and gcc) build system is a bit crazy, and that it definitely will benefit from a new project lead.

tshepang• 12 years ago

You would not notice because it's practically the same. All files have the same names (afaik) for example. They are compatible, and eglibc was like a drop-in replacement. I believe they share nearly all code.

Debian is switching back to GLIBC

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