This is the mail archive of the gdb-patches@sources.redhat.com mailing list for the GDB project.


Index Nav: [Date Index] [Subject Index] [Author Index] [Thread Index]
Message Nav: [Date Prev] [Date Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next]
Other format: [Raw text]

Re: RFA: always default to using the libiberty regex


On Mon, Jan 27, 2003 at 04:56:56PM -0800, Martin M. Hunt wrote:

This patch deletes the configure code to check the OS implementation of
regex and default to that. The default will now always be the builtin.


2003-01-27 Martin M. Hunt <hunt@redhat.com>

* configure.in: Revert check for system regex. Use builtin regex by
default. * configure: Rebuilt.


I'm still not convinced this is a good idea.

Context: it's a bug in the system's GNU C library, and should be fixed
as such. All the rest of us who have a version of glibc which has this
issue addressed don't have a problem, and I don't really want to carry
around yet another statically linked copy of regex if I don't need to. Since it doesn't manifest on my system, I suspect it is fixed in glibc
2.3.1; it's another piece of fallout from Red Hat's choice of using the
brand-new barely-tested glibc 2.2.93 for their desktop product.
There are several choices here:

- GDB prefers the installed regex.

This is what the current config is doing.
I think it is telling that the patch hasn't even been in for a month and, already, we've hit problems. No matter where the problem is, it is GDB that will get the blame. I also believe that way back when this was last debated, specific regex releases were identified as problematic.


- GDB prefers the bundled regex.

This is what the old config was doing.
Doing this means that GDB needs to, at regular intervals, upgrade that code. We do this now for readline. It also means that the GDB developers are insulated from problems with the utility libraries.


As best I can tell, the only people that really benefit from the system regex are those making distros - it saves them the hassle of having to remember --with-..regex=. GDB developers don't benefit - we all need to specify the bundled regex as otherwize we can't reproduce each others results (cf Martin's problem). GDB users don't benefit as they now get a GDB of unknown quality.

Andrew

--

Martin,

I suspect that you are configuring with the wrong autoconf. You want the one on the sware binutils ftp site.

Andrew



Index Nav: [Date Index] [Subject Index] [Author Index] [Thread Index]
Message Nav: [Date Prev] [Date Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next]