[klibc] klibc and what's the next step?

H. Peter Anvin hpa at zytor.com
Tue Jul 11 11:22:18 PDT 2006


Olaf Hering wrote:
> "It would be nice if ..." someone can build a list of things that
> changed over time. Say from 2.0.0 to 2.6.18. Just struct layouts and defines.
> 
> I havent tried it, but one would hope that the /bin/ls from SuSE 5.3 still
> works today.  Guess its time for me to actually try that the next days.

You know how much code there is in glibc to make your /bin/ls still work?

That being said, it in general isn't a problem to continue to use the 
same exact sets of system calls, but that also means skipping any new 
functionality.  In recent memory that includes things like 64-bit file 
offsets and high signals, even more recently it means things like 
openat() and splice().  A full-blown libc also has to deal with 
LinuxThreads version NPTL.  Etc.

Again, I fully expect that klibc-0.1 still works on the current kernels, 
but current klibc wouldn't work on 2.4 kernels.

	-hpa



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