137 lines
5.2 KiB
Plaintext
137 lines
5.2 KiB
Plaintext
Open jobs for finishing GNU libc:
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---------------------------------
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Status: May 1998
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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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[ 6] Write `long double' versions of the math functions. This should be
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done in collaboration with the NetBSD and FreeBSD people.
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The libm is in fact fdlibm (not the same as in Linux libc).
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**** Partly done. But we need someone with numerical experiences for
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the rest.
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[ 7] Several math functions have to be written:
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- exp2
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with long double arguments.
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Beside this most of the complex math functions which are new in
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ISO C 9X should be improved. Writing some of them in assembler is
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useful to exploit the parallelism which often is available.
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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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[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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[14] We need to write a library for on-the-fly transformation of streams
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of text. In fact, this would be a recode-library (you know, GNU recode).
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This is needed in several places in the GNU libc and I already have
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rather concrete plans but so far no possibility to start this.
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*** The library is available, now it remains to be used in the streams.
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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 __P ((int, int, int, int));
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Blargh!
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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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[17] The sprof program to analyze the profiling data generated by ld.so
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must be finished. It should have the same functionality as gprof
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(as far as this is possible).
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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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[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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