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GNU C Library Release 2.3 announced


From: Mark Brown
Subject: GNU C Library Release 2.3 announced
Date: Thu, 3 Oct 2002 21:19:37 -0500

Release 2.3 of the GNU C library is now available at

   ftp://sources.redhat.com/pub/glibc/releases

and (hopefully soon)

   ftp://ftp.gnu.org/pub/gnu/glibc

and all the mirror sites around the globe.

The new files are

   glibc-2.3.tar.bz2    (also .gz)
   glibc-linuxthreads-2.3.tar.bz2       (also .gz)
   glibc-2.2.5-2.3.diff.bz2     (also .gz)

and for those following the test releases

   glibc-2.2.94-2.3.diff.bz2    (also.gz)


This release introduces a number of new features but not too many.
glibc 2.2 was already mostly complete.  Instead this release focuses
on making functionality compliant with standards and on performance
optimizations.  The user visible changes include:

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Version 2.3

* Masahide Washizawa contributed iconv modules for IBM1163 and IBM1164
  charsets.

* iconv (the program and the interface) now accepts empty names (excluding
  options like //TRANSLIT) to mean "use charset of current locale".

* localedef can now transliterate characters in strings which are not in
  the provided charmap.  The information from the input locale is used.

* Prelinking support was added for ELF targets.  This requires additional
  tools and recent versions of the GNU binutils.  Contributed by Jakub
  Jelinek.

* Read-only stdio streams now use mmap to speed up operation by 
eliminating
  copying and buffer underflows.  To use add 'm' to the mode string of
  the fopen/fdopen/freopen call.  Implemented by Ulrich Drepper.

* The malloc functions were completely rewritten by Wolfram Gloger based
  on Doug Lea's malloc-2.7.0.c.

* Isamu Hasegawa contributed a completely new and POSIX-conformant
  implementation of regex.

* Bruno Haible upgraded the iconv and locale implementation to support
  Unicode 3.2.

* Contents of the LC_* and LANG environment variables in the CEN style are
  not recognized anymore.   It never was used.  Change by Ulrich Drepper.

* The runtime (ld.so, libc, libpthread for Linux) now can handle the ELF
  thread-local storage (TLS) ABI on some platforms.
  Changes by Ulrich Drepper.  SH support by Kaz Kojima.

* Bruno Haible contributed iconv converters for ISO-2022-JP-3, 
  SHIFTJIS-X0213, EUC-JISX0213, and TISCII.

* New header <ifaddrs.h> with functions `getifaddrs' and `freeifaddrs':
  BSD-compatible interface for getting all network interface addresses.
  Implementation for IPv4 by Roland McGrath.

* Loading of locale data is faster due to the introduction of a locale
  archive.  Implemented by Roland McGrath and Ulrich Drepper.

* Startup times are significantly reduced by not using exported functions
  inside the library itself.  Changes by Jakub Jelinek, Roland McGrath,
  and Ulrich Drepper.

* Steven Munroe contributed a port to PowerPC64/Linux.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


This release of the library runs on the following targets:

   i[3456]86-*-gnu      GNU Hurd on Intel
   i[3456]86-*-linux-gnu   Linux-2.x on Intel
   alpha*-*-linux-gnu   Linux-2.x on DEC Alpha
   powerpc-*-linux-gnu     Linux and MkLinux on PowerPC systems
   powerpc64-*-linux-gnu   Linux-2.4.19+ on 64-bit PowerPC systems
   sparc-*-linux-gnu   Linux-2.x on SPARC
   sparc64-*-linux-gnu   Linux-2.x on UltraSPARC 64-bit
   ia64-*-linux-gnu   Linux-2.x on ia64
   s390-*-linux-gnu   Linux-2.x on IBM S/390
   s390x-*-linux-gnu   Linux-2.4+ on IBM S/390 64-bit
   sh-*-linux-gnu      Linux-2.x on Super Hitachi
   x86-64-*-linux-gnu   Linux-2.4+ on x86-64

The following targets should not be far away from being usable:

   *-*-gnu         GNU Hurd on platforms other than Intel
   arm-*-linux-gnu      Linux-2.x on ARM
   cris-*-linux-gnu   Linux-2.4+ on CRIS
   hppa*-*-linux-gnu   Linux-2.x on HP/PA
   m68k-*-linux-gnu   Linux-2.x on Motorola 680x0
   mips*-*-linux-gnu   Linux-2.x on MIPS

Previous releases worked on the following targets, the current status
is unknown:

   arm-*-none      ARM standalone systems
   arm-*-linuxaout      Linux-2.x on ARM using a.out (obsolete?!)


We believe that this release is very stable.  Upgrading is highly
encouraged.

*BUT*: updating the C library is no trivial task and it is very easy
to damage one's system.  Therefore, persons who do not exactly know
what to do, should consider using a binary distribution instead, when
it becomes available.  All major GNU/Linux distributors will hopefully
base their next release on glibc 2.3.  Don't tell us you haven't
been warned.  Another reason why not everybody should think about
compiling glibc is the disk and CPU requirements: on Intel platforms
the full build requires about 330MB plus the space you need to install
it.  This number is higher on most RISC platforms.  During the
compilation the compiler will need large amounts of virtual memory.
We are talking about 100MB on Intel and 200MB on Alpha.  If using the
`-j' option of make these numbers grow linearly.  Building the
complete library without profiling support on a address@hidden system
takes about 32 minutes, checking adds another 25 minutes.  On not
highly tuned and slower systems the times are very much higher and it
possibly takes several days on very old and slow systems.  The '-j'
option for make is very useful on SMP systems, the Makefiles are save
for builds with high '-j' numbers (except when the compilation happens
in the source directory; simply create a new directory and compile in
that one instead).

It is generally always a good idea to build in a separate directory
and simply configure using

  /path/to/glibc-2.3/configure ...options for configure...

Even though TLS support is mentioned as one new feature for this release
the default is not to build glibc with TLS support enabled.  This has
several reasons, most of which are out of control of the glibc
developers.  Therefore it is necessry to *not* use the --with-tls option
for configure.


In case you decide to compile glibc yourself you need to read the
files INSTALL and FAQ.  It will explain among other things which tools
are necessary.  The most important one is the compiler.  Starting with
this release the earliest accepted compiler is gcc 3.2.  The configure
script will complain about any earlier compiler.

In case of problems with building glibc it is advised to first try the
very latest sources from the stable gcc 3.2 branch.  The problems
might already have been fixed.


It is also important to get very recent binutils.  For Linux kernels this
normally means the releases by H.J. Lu which are available at

  ftp://ftp.kernel.org/pub/linux/devel/binutils

Version 2.13.90.0.4 has been reported to work.  Before reporting a bug
please make sure you are using a recent version.


In case you are modifying the source files which will cause autoconf
to run make sure you have autoconf 2.13 installed and *NOT* version
2.50 and up.  These versions will not work.  Support for the new
autoconf will be enabled in upcoming releases.


To enable prelinking an additional package is needed.  The prelink
program is available at

  ftp://people.redhat.com/jakub/prelink/

The last version as of this writing is

  prelink-20021002.tar.bz2

It should support all the not-embedded architectures but the demands
on recent tools and kernels might be high.  Read the documentation
coming with the package.  Your distribution of choice might already
have a package available, check it first.


On GNU/Linux systems the configure script has a new option
`--enable-kernel' (find the documentation in the INSTALL file).  This
option allows one to strip out compatibility code for older kernel
versions.  This is of interest since configuring for a 2.4.x kernel
reduces the libc size by about 1%.  This is no high percentage but all
the code gone is in the by far most often used functions.  The
compatibility code is needed because of poor design decisions of the
kernel developers who constantly have to adjust the interface to new
requirements.  If you never expect to run kernel versions older than
the one used at compile time of the library it is a good idea to pass
`--enable-kernel=current' to configure.  But be careful since with an
older kernel the program won't even start and the whole system might
be rendered useless (unless backup kernels are available).


The 2.3.x release should be binary compatible with the 2.2 and earlier
releases.  All correct programs should continue to run.  This does
*not* mean that programs compiled on a system running glibc 2.3.x will
run on systems with only glibc 2.2.  Compatibility is always in one
direction.  Systems with glibc 2.2 will not even attempt to run
binaries generated with glibc 2.3.x if this is not possible so there
is not much to worry about.

The locale files are now kept in an archive which guarantees much
faster access.  Startup times of applications using setlocale() are
significantly improved.  The locale archive is handled by the
localedef program just like ordinary compilation of locales.  By
running

   make localedata/install-locales

it is possible to generate an archive with all locales.
take a while.  Using the -j option on SMP systems should help.  It is
most of the time not necessary to install all locales.  Just pick the
once which the users of the system will want to use.


There are normally no problems to be expected when compiling code with
the new glibc version.  In a few cases programs make wrong assumptions
and the build will suddenly fail (recent example: using CLK_TCK in
initializers for static or global variables which is wrong since is
CLK_TCK is not guaranteed to be a constant).  Make sure you review
the appropriate standards before you claim to have found a bug.


Problems should all be reported using the `glibcbug' shell script.
*NEVER* send mail to the maintainer or any other developer directly; we
prefer the script.  Mailing lists are there not only to distribute
the workload, they also help to archive questions and answers.  Use this
script, fill out the information and you are set.  If at the time you
start the script it complains like this

   /usr/bin/glibcbug: emacs: command not found

set one of the environment variables EDITOR and VISUAL (this should
ideally happen on every system automatically):

   env EDITOR=vi glibcbug

Do this also if you don't want to edit the bug report in Emacs (we
cannot imagine why not but...)

Before sending a bug report make sure you have read the BUGS and the
FAQ files which come with the glibc sources.  You won't get an
answer if it is obvious you haven't read these files.  It is also
helpful to scan the appropriate newsgroups and mailing lists to see
whether somebody else already had this problem.  There is another
thing we don't want to hear about: the size.  glibc is big, but this
is necessary for a multi-platform Unix library.

In case the bug database is once again offline send the reports to the
address@hidden mailing list.


Responsible for this release are among others:

   Ulrich Drepper
   Wolfram Gloger
   Bruno Haible
   Isamu Hasegawa
   Andreas Jaeger
   Jakub Jelinek
   Kaz Kojima
   H.J. Lu
   Roland McGrath
   Steven Munroe
   Andreas Schwab
   Franz Sirl


We want to thank all of them.  Thanks also to the few dedicated
testers we have:

   Kaoru Fukui
   Jack Howarth


-----
cheers,
The FSF GNU C Library Steering Committee







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