1 Open jobs for finishing GNU libc:
2 ---------------------------------
5 If you have time and talent to take over any of the jobs below please
6 contact <bug-glibc@prep.ai.mit.edu>
8 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
10 [ 1] Port to new platforms or test current version on formerly supported
13 **** See http://www.gnu.org/software/libc/porting.html for more details.
16 [ 2] Test compliance with standards. If you have access to recent
17 standards (IEEE, ISO, ANSI, X/Open, ...) and/or test suites you
18 could do some checks as the goal is to be compliant with all
19 standards if they do not contradict each other.
22 [ 3] The IMHO opinion most important task is to write a more complete
23 test suite. We cannot get too many people working on this. It is
24 not difficult to write a test, find a definition of the function
25 which I normally can provide, if necessary, and start writing tests
26 to test for compliance. Beside this, take a look at the sources
27 and write tests which in total test as many paths of execution as
31 [ 4] Write translations for the GNU libc message for the so far
32 unsupported languages. GNU libc is fully internationalized and
33 users can immediately benefit from this.
35 Take a look at the matrix in
36 ftp://prep.ai.mit.edu/pub/gnu/ABOUT-NLS
37 for the current status (of course better use a mirror of prep).
40 [ 5] Write wordexp() function; this is described in POSIX.2, the
41 header <wordexp.h> already exists.
43 Implementation idea: use some functions from bash.
45 **** Somebody is working on this. Help may or may not be appreciated.
48 [ 6] Write `long double' versions of the math functions. This should be
49 done in collaboration with the NetBSD and FreeBSD people.
51 The libm is in fact fdlibm (not the same as in Linux libc).
53 **** Partly done. But we need someone with numerical experiences for
57 [ 7] Several math functions have to be written:
68 each with float, double, and long double arguments. Writing these
69 functions should be possible when following the implementation of
70 the existing exp/log functions for other bases.
72 Beside this most of the complex math functions which are new in
73 ISO C 9X. gcc already has support for numbers of complex type so the
74 implementation should be possible today. I mention here the names
75 and the way to write them (argument is z = x + iy):
77 - sin(z) = 1/(2i) (e^(iz) - e^-(iz)) = sin(x) cosh(y) + i cos(x) sinh(y)
78 - cos(z) = 1/2 (e^(iz) + e^-(iz)) = cos(x) cosh(y) - i sin(x) sinh(y)
79 - tan(z) = 1/i (e^(iz) - e^-(iz))/(e^(iz) + e^-(iz))
80 - cot(z) = i (e^(iz) + e^-(iz))/(e^(iz) - e^-(iz))
81 - asin(z) = -i ln(iz + sqrt(1-z^2))
82 - acos(z) = -i ln(z + sqrt(z^2-1))
83 - atan(z) = 1/(2i) ln((1+iz)/(1-iz))
84 - acot(z) = -1/(2i) ln((iz+1)/(iz-1))
85 - tanh(z) = (e^z - e^-z)/(e^z + e^-z)
86 - coth(z) = (e^z + e^-z)/(e^z - e^-z)
88 All functions should we written with all the parallelism in mind.
89 And assembler versions are highly expreciated since, e.g., the ix87
90 FPU provides an `fsincos' instructions which is certainly useful for
91 the `sin' function. The implementations for the normal math functions
92 shows other optimization techniques.
95 [ 8] If you enjoy assembler programming (as I do --drepper :-) you might
96 be interested in writing optimized versions for some functions.
97 Especially the string handling functions can be optimized a lot.
101 Faster String Functions
102 Henry Spencer, University of Toronto
103 Usenix Winter '92, pp. 419--428
105 or just ask. Currently mostly i?86 and Alpha optimized versions
106 exist. Please ask before working on this to avoid duplicate
110 [ 9] Write nftw() function. Perhaps it might be good to reimplement the
111 ftw() function as well to share most of the code.
116 [10] Extend regex and/or rx to work with wide characters and complete
117 implementation of character class and collation class handling.
119 It is planed to do a complete rewrite.
122 [11] Write access function for netmasks, bootparams, and automount
123 databases for nss_files and nss_db module.
124 The functions should be embedded in the nss scheme. This is not
125 hard and not all services must be supported at once.
128 [12] Rewrite utmp/wtmp functions to use database functions. This is much
129 better than the normal flat file format.
131 **** There are plans for a new approach to this problem. Please contact
132 bug-glibc@prep.ai.mit.edu before starting to work.)
135 [13] Several more or less small functions have to be written:
137 + tcgetid() and waitid() from XPG4.2
138 + grantpt(), ptsname(), unlockpt() from XPG4.2
139 + getdate() from XPG4.2
140 *** Probably underway
142 *** Probably underway
144 More information are available on request.
147 [14] We need to write a library for on-the-fly transformation of streams
148 of text. In fact, this would be a recode-library (you know, GNU recode).
149 This is needed in several places in the GNU libc and I already have
150 rather concrete plans but so far no possibility to start this.
153 [15] Cleaning up the header files. Ideally, each header style should
154 follow the "good examples". Each variable and function should have
155 a short description of the function and its parameters. The prototypes
156 should always contain variable names which can help to identify their
159 int foo __P ((int, int, int, int));