Re: A patch for gnu-regex

["H . J . Lu" <hjl at lucon dot org>]

On Thu, Mar 09, 2000 at 04:53:39PM -0800, Stan Shebs wrote:
> "H . J . Lu" wrote:
> 
> > > A GNU/Linux distributor is free to build a GDB that regexp from an
> > > installed glibc. Actually such a distributor is free to do what ever
> > > they like :-)
> > 
> > Are you saying as far as gdb is concerned, you have no interests
> > whatsoever in glibc nor helping glibc developers and GNU/Linux
> > distributors? If it is true, that is too bad.
> 
> Let's not get all tense here!  There's a balance to be struck between
> being self-contained and depending on system stuff, and there's no
> single rule that applies in all cases.  For instance, GDB includes
> libiberty, even though many of the functions are available on most
> systems by default, including Linux, but I don't seem to hear anybody
> complaining about that bit of redundancy.  (Hmmm, why isn't regex
> in libiberty anyway??)
> 
> In the case of GDB on Linux, part of our problem is that we have
> to support GDB on all versions of Linux, not just the latest
> kernel and library.  So if there is *any* version of glibc with
> a problematic regex, say one from 4-5 years ago, we need to think
> hard about whether we're going to hose people running a Linux that

We can put some check to see if regex in glibc is in ok. From
the glibc log in CVS, my simple check seems ok. I can even restrict 
it to glibc 2.1 and above. I don't think it should be any problem.

> is that old.  GDB's rule has been to maximize compatibility with
> a whole range of OS versions, and now that Linux has sailed past all
> other OSes in number and variety of versions, it's really putting
> our infrastructure to the test.
> 
> In this case, my inclination would be to rely on the glibc regex
> by default.  GDB users don't tend to push the boundaries of regexps
> in their daily debugging activities, and if recent glibcs are good,
> then it's seems unlikely that we'll ever get any bug reports
> stemming from regex problems.  So we'll be taking a bit of a chance,
> but with the configuration option, and if we communicate to the glibc
> folks that we're now always depending on their version to be correct,
> I think things will work out OK.

I think I can be counted as one of the glibc folks :-(.


H.J.