Re: glibc very old

[Miles Bader <miles@gnu.org>]

Steve Langasek <vorlon@debian.org> writes:
>> Is there a reason that Debian has such an old version of glibc, even in
>> unstable?
>
>> The current upstream version of glibc seems to be 2.16, whereas Debian
>> has 2.13 (which is circa 2011-02).
>
> The basic reasons are that 2.14 was a dud of an upstream release, and no one
> found the time after 2.15 came out to get it into shape for all our ports
> before the freeze.

Thanks Steve (etc) ...

I wonder if it's worth filing a bug about expf in particular; I dunno
whether that change is isolated enough to make a patch easy...

Based on a glance at the source, it seems like the math libraries were
changed in lots of little ways between 2.13 and 2.16 [and it looks
like the FPU-twiddling that made expf slow in 2.13 has been _added_ to
the generic version of the "exp" (double-precision) function, meaning
it might actually be (much) _slower_ in 2.16 on ports without
optimized implementations... :( ]

-miles

-- 
Carefully crafted initial estimates reward you not only with
reduced computational effort, but also with understanding and
increased self-esteem.         -- Numerical methods in C,
  Chapter 9. "Root Finding and Nonlinear Sets of Equations"