Hi all,
After a discussion with Joey Hess and later with Frans Pop at Debconf
6, we have decided that it could be a good idea to have a udeb glibc
built with -Os.
I have made a few tests, mainly on i386 and amd64, and also on all
architectures but m68k. All tests were ok. The tests include comparing
the test logs with the normal version, running small tests programs
with threads, and for all architectures but s390, ia64 and alpha (I
don't own those machines) a boot with this glibc. This made me very
enthusiastic.
This has been implemented partially in glibc 2.3.6-10 and more fully
in glibc 2.3.6-11.
However we start facing some problems. We have build failures on s390
and ia64 that were not present on the test builds. That let me think
building the glibc with -Os is maybe not really stable. What it is
sure, is that it is not supported upstream. On hppa, it is only
possible to build the udeb with -Os with gcc-4.1. Also on i386 we've
reached the biggest size possible for a build log (75MB).
That's why I am now thinking of removing that from the current glibc
and postpone that for later (probably etch+1), but I'd like to know
what other people think, also people from d-i to know if the gain in
space is really important for etch.
Bye,
Aurelien