This is the mail archive of the
libc-ports@sources.redhat.com
mailing list for the libc-ports project.
Porting NPTL to GNU/kFreeBSD?
- From: "Brian M. Carlson" <sandals at crustytoothpaste dot ath dot cx>
- To: libc-ports at sources dot redhat dot com
- Date: Sat, 12 Nov 2005 01:38:38 +0000
- Subject: Porting NPTL to GNU/kFreeBSD?
Some Debian developers and users are creating a new (but as of yet unincluded
in unstable) Debian port that uses the FreeBSD kernel as well as the GNU
userland (glibc, coreutils, etc.). We call this port GNU/kFreeBSD, and so
far, it runs on i386-style machines only (i486-i686 inclusive). In order to
do this, we have ported glibc 2.3 to the FreeBSD kernel, based mostly off the
work of Bruno Haible. We have a (mostly) working threads implementation with
LinuxThreads (e.g. KDE works). However, I have seen in the CVS repository
that glibc 2.4 will not support LinuxThreads any longer [0]. As a
consequence, I feel it is essential to port NPTL to the FreeBSD kernel for
the port's continued health.
We are currently using FreeBSD 5.4 as the basis; when we figure out why the
FreeBSD 6.0 kernel/glibc combination doesn't like sshd anymore and fix it, we
will likely move to that.
I am not asking for people to do this task; I will do it, but I have some
questions:
Are there any portability traps of which I need to be aware (other than the
obvious)?
FreeBSD's libpthread/libkse is M:N, while libthr is 1:1. I am unsure whether
libthr's kernel support works on i386, so I'd like to get NPTL to
conditionally support M:N if possible. Is this a silly idea?
Is there anything else important that I need to know?
I am subscribed; no need to Cc: me.
[0]
http://sources.redhat.com/cgi-bin/cvsweb.cgi/libc/NEWS?rev=1.156&content-type=text/x-cvsweb-markup&cvsroot=glibc
--
Brian M. Carlson <sandals@crustytoothpaste.ath.cx>
Running on GNU/kFreeBSD.
Support alternative kernels in Debian!