What should I do about these bugs?
I've been trying to work off some of my old bug reports. In doing so,
several of the libc5 ones fall into two general classes and I'd like
some advice before proceeding. I've copied Ulrich Drepper on this
since the first class also affects glibc.
The first class of bugs has to do with the default, non-POSIX way
getopt reorders command line arguments. My gut feel is that getopt
should have been posix conformant by default. However, if we change
it, we run the risk of pissing off users who are used to the current,
non-POSIX behavior. Since the current behavior has been in use for
quite some time, my recommendation is to keep things as they are and
any programs which need a different behavior will just have to deal
with it.
The second class of bugs has to do with changes in libc5 causing
latent bugs in other packages to show up. The infamous malloc change
fits into this class. In their bug reports, some people suggested
that libc5 include "Conflicts" or "Breaks" (is Breaks implemented
yet?) fields for each package that was "broken" as a result of the
change. While this would work in theory, I don't think it's realistic
to do this except in extreme circumstances such as when the other
package is critical to the operation of the system.
David
--
David Engel ODS Networks
david@sw.ods.com 1001 E. Arapaho Road
(972) 234-6400 Richardson, TX 75081
Reply to: