Testing/help needed - experimental glibc version
As some of you may have seen, there's a new version of glibc in unstable.
It has a couple of nice features - particularly for x86, where both
i686-optimized libraries and NPTL support are included. There are also
sparcv9 libraries. And the packaging has been totally redone for a number
of benefits.
However, the packaging was totally redone. And the glibc version updated
from CVS. I and others have been running around fixing problems relative to
the version currently in unstable, so most of them have been attended to but
some remain.
Here's the ones I know about:
Documentation missing from various packages
pt_chown is missing
/usr/lib/debug doesn't have some important symlinks
libc6-dev's dependency on libc6 has vanished
The locales package has some dependency issues and the SUPPORTED file is
missing
Also, problems with some non-Debian software have been reported - I believe
Citrix on i386 and a JVM on ia64.
Now, we need to find the problems I _don't_ know about. I'd like for those
who feel comfortable testing a new glibc - usual caveats about the quality
of experimental software! - to give it a try. Use it, let us know what
happens. Don't upload Debian packages to the archive built against it,
obviously - they won't be installable because of the >= 2.3.2.ds1 dependency
in shlibs. If you have a kernel above 2.4.something, below 2.6, and an
i686, you'll get i686 optimized libraries - er, I don't know if they'll work
on a Via C3, I didn't check :( Probably not. If you have a kernel at least
2.6.0-test on an i486 or above, you'll get NPTL.
Also, I'd like for porters to build and test this and send debian-glibc
whatever patches were necessary. HPPA doesn't build yet (hi Carlos); i386,
PowerPC, and S/390 will be in the archive this afternoon; sparc, ia64,
alpha, and arm should be buildable; mips, mipsel, m68k, and whatever else
I'm forgetting about are still up in the air.
Where to get it:
Experimental after dinstall today.
How to build it:
You'll need the linux-kernel-headers package. Get it from
http://ftp-master.debian.org/~dan/.
Two ways; either create a fresh chroot and install the build dependencies
there (which will remove libc6-dev temporarily!) or else install all the
build dependencies except linux-kernel-headers, unpack a built
linux-kernel-headers .deb, export LINUX_SOURCE pointing at /usr in the
unpacked linux-kernel-headers tree, and use dpkg-buildpackage -d to ignore
the dependency.
We're counting on your help to get this package in shape (hopefully) for
sarge!
--
Daniel Jacobowitz
MontaVista Software Debian GNU/Linux Developer
Reply to: