166 lines
6.7 KiB
Plaintext
166 lines
6.7 KiB
Plaintext
Open jobs for finishing GNU libc:
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---------------------------------
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Status: February 2001
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If you have time and talent to take over any of the jobs below please
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contact <bug-glibc@gnu.org>.
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~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
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[ 1] Port to new platforms or test current version on formerly supported
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platforms.
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**** See http://www.gnu.org/software/libc/porting.html for more details.
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[ 2] Test compliance with standards. If you have access to recent
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standards (IEEE, ISO, ANSI, X/Open, ...) and/or test suites you
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could do some checks as the goal is to be compliant with all
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standards if they do not contradict each other.
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[ 3] The IMHO opinion most important task is to write a more complete
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test suite. We cannot get too many people working on this. It is
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not difficult to write a test, find a definition of the function
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which I normally can provide, if necessary, and start writing tests
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to test for compliance. Beside this, take a look at the sources
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and write tests which in total test as many paths of execution as
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possible.
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[ 4] Write translations for the GNU libc message for the so far
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unsupported languages. GNU libc is fully internationalized and
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users can immediately benefit from this.
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Take a look at the matrix in
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ftp://ftp.gnu.org/pub/gnu/ABOUT-NLS
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for the current status (of course better use a mirror of ftp.gnu.org).
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[ 8] If you enjoy assembler programming (as I do --drepper :-) you might
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be interested in writing optimized versions for some functions.
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Especially the string handling functions can be optimized a lot.
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Take a look at
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Faster String Functions
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Henry Spencer, University of Toronto
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Usenix Winter '92, pp. 419--428
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or just ask. Currently mostly i?86 and Alpha optimized versions
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exist. Please ask before working on this to avoid duplicate
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work.
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[10] Extend regex and/or rx to work with wide characters and complete
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implementation of character class and collation class handling.
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It is planned to do a complete rewrite.
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*** We have now multibyte character support. But a rewrite is still
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necessary.
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[11] Write access function for netmasks, bootparams, and automount
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databases for nss_files and nss_db module.
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The functions should be embedded in the nss scheme. This is not
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hard and not all services must be supported at once.
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[15] Cleaning up the header files. Ideally, each header style should
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follow the "good examples". Each variable and function should have
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a short description of the function and its parameters. The prototypes
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should always contain variable names which can help to identify their
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meaning; better than
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int foo (int, int, int, int);
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Blargh!
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*** The conformtest.pl tool helps cleaning the namespace. As far as
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known the prototypes all contain parameter names. But maybe some
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comments can be improved.
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[16] The libio stream file functions should be extended in a way to use
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mmap to map the file and use it as the buffer to user sees. For
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read-only streams this should be rather easy and it avoids all read()
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calls.
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A more sophisticated solution would use mmap also for writing. The
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standards do not demand that the file on the disk is always in the
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correct form so it would be possible to enlarge it always according
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to the page size and install the correct length only for fclose() and
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fflush() calls.
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[18] Based on the sprof program we need tools to analyze the output. The
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result should be a link map which specifies in which order the .o
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files are placed in the shared object. This should help to improve
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code locality and result in a smaller foorprint (in code and data
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memory) since less pages are only used in small parts.
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[19] A user-level STREAMS implementation should be available if the
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kernel does not provide the support.
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*** This is a much lower priority job now that STREAMS are optional in
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XPG.
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[20] More conversion modules for iconv(3). Existing modules should be
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extended to do things like transliteration if this is wanted.
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For often used conversion a direct conversion function should be
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available.
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[21] The nscd program and the stubs in the libc should be changed so
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that each program uses only one socket connect. Take a look at
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http://www.cygnus.com/~drepper/nscd.html
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An alternative approach is to use an mmap()ed file. The idea is
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the following:
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- the nscd creates the hash tables and the information it stores
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in it in a mmap()ed region. This means no pointers must be
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used, only offsets.
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OR
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if POSIX shared memory is available use a named shared memory
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region to put the data in
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- each program using NSS functionality tries to open the file
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with the data.
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- by checking some timestamp (which the nscd renews frequently)
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the programs can test whether the file is still valid
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- if the file is valid look through the nscd and locate the
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appropriate hash table for the database and lookup the data.
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If it is included we are set.
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- if the data is not yet in the database we contact the nscd using
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the currently implemented methods.
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[23] The `strptime' function needs to be completed. This includes among
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other things that it must get teached about timezones. The solution
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envisioned is to extract the timezones from the ADO timezone
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specifications. Special care must be given names which are used
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multiple times. Here the precedence should (probably) be according
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to the geograhical distance. E.g., the timezone EST should be
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treated as the `Eastern Australia Time' instead of the US `Eastern
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Standard Time' if the current TZ variable is set to, say,
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Australia/Canberra or if the current locale is en_AU.
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[25] Sun's nscd version implements a feature where the nscd keeps N entries
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for each database current. I.e., if an entries lifespan is over and
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it is one of the N entries to be kept the nscd updates the information
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instead of removing the entry.
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How to decide about which N entries to keep has to be examined.
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Factors should be number of uses (of course), influenced by aging.
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Just imagine a computer used by several people. The IDs of the current
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user should be preferred even if the last user spent more time.
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[27] We need a second test suite with tests which cannot run during a normal
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`make check' run. This test suite can require root priviledges and
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can test things like DNS (i.e., require network access),
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user-interaction, networking in general, and probably many other things.
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