Re: GS register to access thread-specific state on x86
Thank you, Daniel, for the explanation of why Debian's glibc is built
the way it is. I knew there would be good reasons.
I am glad to know that 2.6 kernels will work with floating stacks and
the current libc. I have updated the Jikes RVM user's guide to
reflect this. I hope I have accurately described the situation; if
one of you would be kind enough to look at it[1], I would appreciate
any corrections of the explanation.
As of three weeks ago (April 14th, when I installed Debian for the
first time), sarge was still installing 2.4-series kernels by default.
It sounds as if, even after Sarge comes out, a default Debian system
installed in the most common fashion will still not support floating
stacks.
Daniel Jacobowitz wrote:
The decision to not support floating stacks on a 2.4 kernel was made
out of practicality only; we already have three versions of glibc for
x86 systems, and a fourth would be overkill.
I would like to explain why I think providing a fourth version of x86
glibc, overkill though it seems, would serve the interests of Debian
and its commitment to free software.
Right now, there is still no free runtime system that can call itself
Java. However, Jikes RVM, and other projects[2], are building some
that will be able to do so one day. In the mean time, the free java
projects are improving and bringing more and more Java projects over
from contrib (because they depended on a proprietary Java runtime)
into main.
So, by helping Jikes RVM to fully work on Debian (there's already a
Debian package available for it) it means that we would probably be
able to bring packages like the Eclipse IDE over from contrib into
main; they're stuck in contrib right now, but they won't have to be.
And fewer people will have to pull down the Sun Java runtime
environment from non-free in order to use the programs they want to use.
Thank you for your consideration.
Respectfully Yours,
--Steven Augart
[1] Visit
http://www-124.ibm.com/jikesrvm/userguide/HTML/faq_building.html and
search for the word "Debian".
[2] http://classpath.wildebeest.org/planet/
--
Steven Augart
Jikes RVM, a free, open source, Virtual Machine:
http://oss.software.ibm.com/jikesrvm
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