[gentoo-dev] Making NPTL the default

[Travis Tilley]

...ok, not really, but the subject got your attention though, didnt it? :)

we're a bit behind the times regarding nptl support. the latest -masked- 
glibc tries to correct this by changing the default behavior with 
USE=nptl to that of pretty much every other distribution out there: it 
builds glibc twice, once with and once without nptl. the nptl libs go 
into lib/tls where they belong and are used by default when using a 2.6 
kernel and LD_ASSUME_KERNEL isnt set. when using a vanilla 2.4 kernel or 
LD_ASSUME_KERNEL=2.4.*, the non-nptl libs are used. (nptl purists can 
still set USE=nptlonly to revert to the old behavior)

now currently the ebuild still requires 2.6 headers and kernel to 
compile nptl support. this is mostly because i cant even compile a 2.4 
kernel anymore, and if i could it probably wouldnt have real support for 
my box... nptl could be made to build using suse's, fedora's, 
mandrake's, etc sanitized 2.4 headers. i would appreciate it if someone 
did the work for this. :)

once an nptl-enabled glibc can be compiled without requiring 2.6 
headers, it -may- start making sense to make nptl a default since even 
users stuck in 2.4-land would be able to use any nptl-enabled glibc 
binaries shipped in stage tarballs.

just a thought.


Travis Tilley
Gentoo/AMD64

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