Re: [gentoo-user] glibc update

[Michael P. Soulier]

On 18/03/09 Alan McKinnon said:

> You said "glibc is the basis of the whole system". That's not quite true,
> it's actually "glibc provides the C library, which is a collection of basic
> function calls that just about every other program uses sooner or later"

I wasn't sure if any interface changes had been made. Looking at the glibc 2.8
release notes, it doesn't look like it but I wanted to check before upgrading.
It makes me nervous. :)

> If there's an issues, revdep-rebuild will pick them up.

Ok, good.

> Sometimes, glibc is all fsck'ed up. Like sys-libs/glibc-2.9_p20081201-r1. It
> looks great, till you start firefox and find that it doesn't run anymore...

So, how would I know, in general, whether it's safe to upgrade when it appears
in my emerge output? Just ask here? My BSD box has a /usr/ports/UPDATING file
that I check before upgrading ports for any notices...

> No, glibc might need updated kernel headers. The compiler uses them when
> building glibc - the headers tell the compiler what data structures,
> functions etc look like so that the glibc it builds can talk to whatever
> kernel you choose to run later.

So will it use /usr/src/linux by default? If so then I'm ok...

> The only time you really need to update the kernel headers is if they
> provide some new features you want to take advantage of. The interface that
> the kernel provides to userspace is virtually frozen and Linus simply never
> changes it.

Good to know.

> In short, updating glibc is as safe as updating any other piece of software,
> as long as it has no known major bugs that cause you issues.

Ok, thanks for the response.

Mike
-- 
Michael P. Soulier <msoulier@×××××××××××××.ca>
"Any intelligent fool can make things bigger and more complex... It takes a
touch of genius - and a lot of courage to move in the opposite direction."
--Albert Einstein