[Buildroot] [PATCH 4/4] remove Glibc_vs_uClibc document

Thomas Petazzoni thomas.petazzoni at free-electrons.com
Mon Oct 10 08:46:42 UTC 2011


This document has nothing to do with Buildroot, and is probably a
leftover from the uClibc documentation.

Signed-off-by: Thomas Petazzoni <thomas.petazzoni at free-electrons.com>
Acked-by: "Yann E. MORIN" <yann.morin.1998 at anciens.enib.fr>
Acked-by: Luca Ceresoli <luca at lucaceresoli.net>
---
 docs/Glibc_vs_uClibc.html |  240 ---------------------------------------------
 1 files changed, 0 insertions(+), 240 deletions(-)
 delete mode 100644 docs/Glibc_vs_uClibc.html

diff --git a/docs/Glibc_vs_uClibc.html b/docs/Glibc_vs_uClibc.html
deleted file mode 100644
index c14eb8c..0000000
--- a/docs/Glibc_vs_uClibc.html
+++ /dev/null
@@ -1,240 +0,0 @@
-<!--#include file="header.html" -->
-
-<h2>uClibc vs. glibc</h2>
-
-<p>
-  uClibc and Glibc are not the same -- there are a number of differences which
-  may or may not cause you problems.  This document attempts to list these 
-  differences and, when completed, will contain a full list of all relevant 
-  differences. 
-  <br><br></p>
- <ol>
-  <li>uClibc is smaller than glibc.  We attempt to maintain a glibc compatible
-  interface, allowing applications that compile with glibc to easily compile with
-  uClibc.  However, we do not include _everything_ that glibc includes, and
-  therefore some applications may not compile.  If this happens to you, please
-  report the failure to the uclibc mailing list, with detailed error messages.
-  </li><br>
-  <li>uClibc is much more configurable then glibc.  This means that a developer
-  may have compiled uClibc in such a way that significant amounts of
-  functionality have been omitted.
-  </li><br>
-  <li>uClibc does not even attempt to ensure binary compatibility across releases.
-  When a new version of uClibc is released, you may or may not need to recompile
-  all your binaries.
-  </li><br>
-  <li><ul><li> malloc(0) in glibc returns a valid pointer to something(!?!?) while in
-  uClibc calling malloc(0) returns a NULL.  The behavior of malloc(0) is listed
-  as implementation-defined by SuSv3, so both libraries are equally correct.
-  This difference also applies to realloc(NULL, 0).  I personally feel glibc's
-  behavior is not particularly safe.  To enable glibc behavior, one has to
-  explicitly enable the MALLOC_GLIBC_COMPAT option.
-  </li><br><li>
-  glibc's malloc() implementation has behavior that is tunable via the
-  MALLOC_CHECK_ environment variable.  This is primarily used to provide extra
-  malloc debugging features.  These extended malloc debugging features are not
-  available within uClibc.  There are many good malloc debugging libraries
-  available for Linux (dmalloc, electric fence, valgrind, etc) that work much
-  better than the glibc extended malloc debugging.  So our omitting this
-  functionality from uClibc is not a great loss.
-  </li><br>
-  </ul></li>
-  <li>uClibc does not provide a database library (libdb).
-  </li><br>
-  <li>uClibc does not support NSS (/lib/libnss_*), which allows glibc to easily
-  support various methods of authentication and DNS resolution.  uClibc only
-  supports flat password files and shadow password files for storing
-  authentication information.  If you need something more complex than this,
-  you can compile and install pam.
-  </li><br>
-  <li>uClibc's libresolv is only a stub.  Some, but not all of the functionality
-  provided by glibc's libresolv is provided internal to uClibc.  Other functions
-  are not at all implemented.
-  </li><br>
-  <li>libnsl provides support for Network Information Service (NIS) which was
-  originally called "Yellow Pages" or "YP", which is an extension of RPC invented
-  by Sun to share Unix password files over the network.  I personally think NIS
-  is an evil abomination and should not be used.  These days, using ldap is much
-  more effective mechanism for doing the same thing.  uClibc provides a stub
-  libnsl, but has no actual support for Network Information Service (NIS).
-  We therefore, also do not provide any of the headers files provided by glibc
-  under /usr/include/rpcsvc.
-  </li><br>
-  <li>uClibc's locale support is not 100% complete yet.  We are working on it.
-  </li><br>
-  <li>uClibc's math library only supports long double as inlines, and even
-  then the long double support is quite limited.  Also, very few of the
-  float math functions are implemented.  Stick with double and you should
-  be just fine.
-  </li><br>
-  <li>uClibc's libcrypt does not support the reentrant crypt_r, setkey_r and
-  encrypt_r, since these are not required by SuSv3.
-  </li><br>
-  <li>uClibc directly uses kernel types to define most opaque data types.
-  </li><br>
-  <li>uClibc directly uses the linux kernel's arch specific 'stuct stat'.
-  </li><br>
-  <li>uClibc's librt library currently lacks all aio routines, all clock
-    routines, and all shm routines (only the timer routines and the mq
-    routines are implemented). 
-   </li><br>
-</ol> 
-<hr>
-<h3>Manuel's Notes</h3>
-
-  Some general comments...<br>
-  <p>
-  The intended target for all my uClibc code is ANSI/ISO C99 and SUSv3
-  compliance.  While some glibc extensions are present, many will eventually
-  be configurable.  Also, even when present, the glibc-like extensions may
-  differ slightly or be more restrictive than the native glibc counterparts.
-  They are primarily meant to be porting _aides_ and not necessarily
-  drop-in replacements.
-  </p><br>
-Now for some details...<br><br>
-
-<u>time functions</u><br>
-<ol>
-<li>Leap seconds are not supported.</li><br>
-<li>/etc/timezone and the whole zoneinfo directory tree are not supported.
-   To set the timezone, set the TZ environment variable as specified in
-   http://www.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/007904975/basedefs/xbd_chap08.html
-   or you may also create an /etc/TZ file of a single line, ending with a
-   newline, containing the TZ setting.  For example
-   echo CST6CDT > /etc/TZ
-</li><br>
-<li>Currently, locale specific eras and alternate digits are not supported.
-   They are on my TODO list.
-</li>
-</ol><br>
-<u>wide char support</u><br>
-<ol>
-<li>The only multibyte encoding currently supported is UTF-8.  The various
-   ISO-8859-* encodings are (optionally) supported.  The internal
-   representation of wchar's is assumed to be 31 bit unicode values in
-   native endian representation.  Also, the underlying char encoding is
-   assumed to match ASCII in the range 0-0x7f.
-</li>
-<li>In the next iteration of locale support, I plan to add support for
-   (at least some) other multibyte encodings.
-</li>
-</ol>
-<u>locale support</u><br>
-<ol>
-<li>The target for support is SUSv3 locale functionality.  While nl_langinfo
-   has been extended, similar to glibc, it only returns values for related
-   locale entries.
-</li>
-<li>Currently, all SUSv3 libc locale functionality should be implemented
-   except for wcsftime and collating item support in regex.
-</li>
-</ol>
-<u>stdio</u><br>
-<ol>
-<li>Conversion of large magnitude floating-point values by printf suffers a loss
-   of precision due to the algorithm used.
-</li><br>
-<li>uClibc's printf is much stricter than glibcs, especially regarding positional
-   args.  The entire format string is parsed first and an error is returned if
-   a problem is detected.  In locales other than C, the format string is checked
-   to be a valid multibyte sequence as well.  Also, currently at most 10 positional
-   args are allowed (although this is configurable).
-</li><br>
-<li>BUFSIZ is configurable, but no attempt is made at automatic tuning of internal
-   buffer sizes for stdio streams.  In fact, the stdio code in general sacrifices
-   sophistication/performace for minimal size.
-</li><br>
-<li>uClibc allows glibc-like custom printf functions.  However, while not
-   currently checked, the specifier must be <= 0x7f.
-</li><br>
-<li>uClibc allows glibc-like custom streams.  However, no in-buffer seeking is
-   done.
-</li><br>
-<li>The functions fcloseall() and __fpending() can behave differently than their
-   glibc counterparts.
-</li><br>
-<li>uClibc's setvbuf is more restrictive about when it can be called than glibc's
-   is.  The standards specify that setvbuf must occur before any other operations
-   take place on the stream.
-</li><br>
-<li>Right now, %m is not handled properly by printf when the format uses positional
-   args.
-</li><br>
-<li>The FILEs created by glibc's fmemopen(), open_memstream(), and fopencookie()
-   are not capable of wide orientation.  The corresponding uClibc routines do
-   not have this limitation.
-</li><br>
-<li>For scanf, the C99 standard states "The fscanf function returns the value of
-    the macro EOF if an input failure occurs before any conversion."  But glibc's
-    scanf does not respect conversions for which assignment was surpressed, even
-    though the standard states that the value is converted but not stored.
-</li></ol><br>
-<hr><h3>Glibc bugs</h3><br>
-glibc bugs that Ulrich Drepper has refused to acknowledge or comment on
-  ( <a href="http://sources.redhat.com/ml/libc-alpha/2003-09/">http://sources.redhat.com/ml/libc-alpha/2003-09/</a> )
-<br>
-<ol>
-<li>The C99 standard says that for printf, a %s conversion makes no special
-   provisions for multibyte characters.  SUSv3 is even more clear, stating
-   that bytes are written and a specified precision is in bytes.  Yet glibc
-   treats the arg as a multibyte string when a precision is specified and
-   not otherwise.
-</li><br>
-<li>Both C99 and C89 state that the %c conversion for scanf reads the exact
-   number of bytes specified by the optional field width (or 1 if not specified).
-   uClibc complies with the standard.  There is an argument that perhaps the
-   specified width should be treated as an upper bound, based on some historical
-   use.  However, such behavior should be mentioned in the Conformance document.
-</li><br>
-<li>glibc's scanf is broken regarding some numeric patterns.  Some invalid
-   strings are accepted as valid ("0x.p", "1e", digit grouped strings).
-   In spite of my posting examples clearly illustrating the bugs, they remain
-   unacknowledged by the glibc developers.
-</li><br>
-<li>glibc's scanf seems to require a 'p' exponent for hexadecimal float strings.
-   According to the standard, this is optional.
-</li><br>
-<li>C99 requires that once an EOF is encountered, the stream should be treated
-   as if at end-of-file even if more data becomes available.  Further reading
-   can be attempted by clearing the EOF flag though, via clearerr() or a file
-   positioning function.  For details concerning the original change, see
-   Defect Report #141.  glibc is currently non-compliant, and the developers
-   did not comment when I asked for their official position on this issue.
-</li><br>
-<li>glibc's collation routines and/or localedef are broken regarding implicit
-   and explicit UNDEFINED rules.
-</li><br></ol>
-More to follow as I think of it...
-<br><br><hr>
-<h3>Profiling:</h3>
-<p>
-uClibc no longer supports 'gcc -fprofile-arcs  -pg' style profiling, which
-causes your application to generate a 'gmon.out' file that can then be analyzed
-by 'gprof'.  Not only does this require explicit extra support in uClibc, it
-requires that you rebuild everything with profiling support.  There is both a
-size and performance penalty to profiling your applications this way, as well
-as Heisenberg effects, where the act of measuring changes what is measured.
-</p>
-<p>
-There exist a number of less invasive alternatives that do not require you to
-specially instrument your application, and recompile and relink everything.
-</p><p>
-The OProfile system-wide profiler is an excellent alternative:
-      <a href="http://oprofile.sourceforge.net/">http://oprofile.sourceforge.net/</a>
-</p><p>
-Many people have had good results using the combination of Valgrind
-to generate profiling information and KCachegrind for analysis:
-      <a href="http://developer.kde.org/~sewardj/">http://developer.kde.org/~sewardj/</a>
-      <a href="http://kcachegrind.sourceforge.net/">http://kcachegrind.sourceforge.net/</a>
-</p><p>
-Prospect is another alternative based on OProfile:
-      <a href="http://prospect.sourceforge.net/">http://prospect.sourceforge.net/</a>
-</p><p>
-And the Linux Trace Toolkit (LTT) is also a fine tool:
-    <a href="http://www.opersys.com/LTT/">http://www.opersys.com/LTT/</a>
-</p><p>
-FunctionCheck:
-	<a href="http://www710.univ-lyon1.fr/~yperret/fnccheck/">http://www710.univ-lyon1.fr/~yperret/fnccheck/</a>
-</p>
-
-<!--#include file="footer.html" -->
-- 
1.7.4.1



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