Date: Mon, 27 Jan 1997 02:34:51 +0100 (MET) From: Roger Espel Llima <espel@llaic.univ-bpclermont.fr> To: hackers@freefall.freebsd.org Subject: Re: hackers-digest V3 #36 Message-ID: <199701270135.RAA10146@freefall.freebsd.org> In-Reply-To: <199701262133.NAA25596@freefall.freebsd.org> from "owner-hackers-digest@freefall.freebsd.org" at Jan 26, 97 01:33:06 pm
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> I am curious about the up and comming GNU 2.0 libc. Since the BSD's have > their own libc will you be replacing yours with the GNU one? Not that I > like GNU to much (it seams to be becomming the Microsoft of the free > software world) but it would save a lot of developement time if you > didn't have to worry about your own library. Since this the GNU libc > will be used by Linux it would be hard to go wrong. FreeBSD would be > using the same libc are it's chief competitor. FreeBSD would then only > have the userland commands to deal with, since Linux of course has GNU > maintaining those. Not only the userland commands -- what about the kernel? I don't really think FreeBSD should change to a completely different libc; the GNU libc has some very nice features (reentrancy...) but a system's libc is usually very closely tied to the kernel, so it's good that the same team (or almost...) develops both, as is the case with FreeBSD. > I hate GNU binutils. Really? GNU binutils are gcc, gas, ld and other related commands (nm, objdump...). Are you sure you don't mean GNU fileutils? (ls, cp, rm and all those). I personally like the GNU fileutils and their BSD equivalents pretty much the same. > The next question is. Is the GNU libc 2.0 being ported? I saw that > someone was doing a port for BSDI2.0, is this not the same as FreeBSD? A port for BSDi could probably be adapted very easily for FreeBSD. Even if it isn't used as the default libc, a port is always a good thing... > I am very interested the GNU libc 2.0 for its posix threads and the fact > that it is rentrant (which it has to be of course for threads). What is > the status of kernel-threads in FreeBSD? I heard that you where getting > there. Current kernels already support rfork(), which should be the basis for kernel threads just like clone() is under Linux. > Since you have linux compatibility (except for clone() right?) would it > not be possible to just use the GNU libc 2.0 the way it is? Does it ever > have to be ported? I am sure Linux will always have presidence with GNU > anyway. This of course looks really bad since eventually freebsd will > have linux's kernel calls. But think about it. It is only externel, just > as the GNU libc is externel. Is FreeBSD BSD without the BSD libc? Good > question. That just means that when Linux starts using GNU libc 2.0 (aka Linux libc 6.0), FreeBSD's linux compatibility libc will be changed to a copy of it. That isn't the one BSD commands use though, obviously. Roger -- e-mail: roger.espel.llima@ens.fr WWW page & PGP key: http://www.eleves.ens.fr:8080/home/espel/index.html
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