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Date:      Sat, 14 Apr 2012 13:20:12 GMT
From:      Jeremie Le Hen <jeremie@le-hen.org>
To:        freebsd-bugs@FreeBSD.org
Subject:   Re: bin/166660: [libc] [patch] New util/shlib to change per-fd default stdio buffering mode
Message-ID:  <201204141320.q3EDKCSE076995@freefall.freebsd.org>

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The following reply was made to PR bin/166660; it has been noted by GNATS.

From: Jeremie Le Hen <jeremie@le-hen.org>
To: John Baldwin <jhb@freebsd.org>
Cc: Jeremie Le Hen <jeremie@le-hen.org>, bug-followup@freebsd.org
Subject: Re: bin/166660: [libc] [patch] New util/shlib to change per-fd
 default stdio buffering mode
Date: Sat, 14 Apr 2012 15:11:31 +0200

 On Tue, Apr 10, 2012 at 09:43:16AM -0400, John Baldwin wrote:
 > On Monday, April 09, 2012 5:21:03 pm Jeremie Le Hen wrote:
 > > Hi John,
 > > 
 > > On Mon, Apr 09, 2012 at 11:30:08AM -0400, John Baldwin wrote:
 > > > I think it would be fine to do this in libc directly rather than via
 > > > LD_PRELOAD.  That would let it work for static binaries as well as
 > > > dynamic libraries.  My understanding is that this is how stdbuf works on
 > > > Linux (glibc honors the relevant magic environment variables).  To that
 > > > end, I think it would be ok to move this into libc directly.
 > > 
 > > I thought it would be too expensive to check for three (actually up to
 > > six, see below) in such a critical path.  Moreover, this would have
 > > lowered a lot my chances to see this committed simply because very few
 > > committers would have taken the responsibility for this and the time to
 > > handle the debates that would have sprouted.
 > > 
 > > Your point for static binaries is very valid but aren't you afraid of
 > > the performance impact?  I'll try to spare some time this week to move
 > > libstdbuf code into libc and do some benchmarks.
 > 
 > Hmm, I hadn't considered the performance impact, but to be honest, this
 > is stdio. :)  If it only happens once when stdio is first used then I think
 > this is fine to do in libc.
 
 I looked in the stdio source to see how I could implement there
 efficiently, but the problem is that there isn't a single entry point.
 The best I can do I think is basically something like this:
 
     int stdbuf_done = 0;
 
     void
     _stdbuf()
     {
 	/* libstdbuf code */
 	stdbuf_done = 1;
     }
 
     #define STDBUF()    if (!stdbuf_done) _stdbuf()
 
 And scatter STDBUF() all around.  What do you think of it?
 
 (FWIW, I checked how Linux implemented this, they used an additional
 shared library.)
 
 > > > One more question, do you use the same environment variable as glibc for
 > > > this, or do you use a different scheme?
 > > 
 > > I didn't like the GNU variable names (_STDBUF_I, _STDBUF_O and
 > > _STDBUF_E) so I used STDBUF_0, STDBUF_1 and STDBUF_2 instead.  But the
 > > former are supported for obvious compatibility reasons.  To be honest I
 > > don't really care about the names, we can use the GNU ones if you think
 > > it's better to avoid doing to much strcmp(3), especially if we but the
 > > code in the libc startup path.
 > 
 > If the variable values have the same semantics, then I think it is best to 
 > simply use the same names as glibc.
 
 Ok, I'll do this.
 
 -- 
 Jeremie Le Hen
 
 Men are born free and equal.  Later on, they're on their own.
 				Jean Yanne



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