Bug#2362: bash (readline) dumps core on completion
On Wed, 21 Feb 1996, David Engel wrote:
> > Two possible solutions:
> > 1) Link the own readline of bash into bash (as before)
> > 2) Modify the systems readline after the picture of bash's
> >
> > Number 2) would be preferred, but requires a closer examination by many
> > parties, namely the maintainer of (listed in decreasing involvement,
> > AFAICT): ...
>
> I believe this is what H.J. Lu used to do when he maintained the a.out
> version of readline. He would check each new GNU package which
> included readline for any changes and use whichever one was the
> latest.
I think 2 is the only real alternative. I've moderately familiar with
how the readline library works, having used it (with custom completors)
in some other project. Most of the bugs fixed in versions of readline
seem to be by Chet Ramey, the GNU bash maintainer, not in gdb or other
programs.
gdb and bash are the programs using the library most extensively, so
I'm fairly confident that tracking the library in these two programs
would be enough. New gdb versions are quite rare, maybe once or twice
a year.
What H.J. Lu used to do doesn't strike me as an enormous amount of
work. It is extremely easy to change bash's Makefiles to build a
shared libreadline and then use it (I just did it in 5 minutes). The
maintainer must only then track readline in gdb (or not).
So what I propose is that the maintainer of bash also provide
libreadline, releasing the two as one package. There's really no
reason to release them separately; bash depends on readline, and bash
is a base package, so readline is also a base package.
Guy
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