(Status): More updates.

[kopensolaris-gnu/glibc.git] / PROJECTS

diff --git a/PROJECTS b/PROJECTS
index 9f9d3be..0d4b744 100644 (file)
--- a/PROJECTS
+++ b/PROJECTS
@@ -1,15 +1,17 @@
 Open jobs for finishing GNU libc:
 ---------------------------------
 Open jobs for finishing GNU libc:
 ---------------------------------

-Status: October 1996
+Status: February 2001

 
 If you have time and talent to take over any of the jobs below please
 
 If you have time and talent to take over any of the jobs below please

-contact <bug-glibc@prep.ai.mit.edu>
+contact <bug-glibc@gnu.org>.

 
 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
 \f
 [ 1] Port to new platforms or test current version on formerly supported
      platforms.
 
 
 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
 \f
 [ 1] Port to new platforms or test current version on formerly supported
      platforms.
 

+**** See http://www.gnu.org/software/libc/porting.html for more details.
+

 
 [ 2] Test compliance with standards.  If you have access to recent
      standards (IEEE, ISO, ANSI, X/Open, ...) and/or test suites you
 
 [ 2] Test compliance with standards.  If you have access to recent
      standards (IEEE, ISO, ANSI, X/Open, ...) and/or test suites you


@@ -17,31 +19,44 @@ contact <bug-glibc@prep.ai.mit.edu>
      standards if they do not contradict each other.
 
 
      standards if they do not contradict each other.
 
 

-[ 3] Write translations for the GNU libc message for the so far
+[ 3] The IMHO opinion most important task is to write a more complete
+     test suite.  We cannot get too many people working on this.  It is
+     not difficult to write a test, find a definition of the function
+     which I normally can provide, if necessary, and start writing tests
+     to test for compliance.  Beside this, take a look at the sources
+     and write tests which in total test as many paths of execution as
+     possible.
+
+
+[ 4] Write translations for the GNU libc message for the so far

      unsupported languages.  GNU libc is fully internationalized and
      users can immediately benefit from this.
 
      Take a look at the matrix in
      unsupported languages.  GNU libc is fully internationalized and
      users can immediately benefit from this.
 
      Take a look at the matrix in

-       ftp://prep.ai.mit.edu/pub/gnu/ABOUT-NLS
-     for the current status (of course better use a mirror of prep).
+       ftp://ftp.gnu.org/pub/gnu/ABOUT-NLS
+     for the current status (of course better use a mirror of ftp.gnu.org).

 
 
 
 

-[ 4] Write wordexp() function; this is described in POSIX.2, the
-     header <wordexp.h> already exists.
+[ 6] Write `long double' versions of the math functions.

 
 

-     Implementation idea: use some functions from bash.
+     The libm is in fact fdlibm (not the same as in Linux libc 5).

 
 

+**** Partly done.  But we need someone with numerical experiences for
+     the rest.

 
 

-[ 5] Write `long double' versions of the math functions.  This should be
-     done in collaboration with the NetBSD and FreeBSD people.

 
 

-     The libm is in fact fdlibm (not the same as in Linux libc).
+[ 7] Several math functions have to be written:

 
 

-**** Partly done.  But we need someone with numerical experiences for
-     the rest.
+     - exp2

 
 

+     with long double arguments.

 
 

-[ 6] If you enjoy assembler programming (as I do --drepper :-) you might
+     Beside this most of the complex math functions which are new in
+     ISO C99 should be improved.  Writing some of them in assembler is
+     useful to exploit the parallelism which often is available.
+
+
+[ 8] If you enjoy assembler programming (as I do --drepper :-) you might

      be interested in writing optimized versions for some functions.
      Especially the string handling functions can be optimized a lot.
 
      be interested in writing optimized versions for some functions.
      Especially the string handling functions can be optimized a lot.
 


@@ -56,45 +71,131 @@ contact <bug-glibc@prep.ai.mit.edu>
      work.
 
 
      work.
 
 

-[ 7] Write nftw() function.  Perhaps it might be good to reimplement the
-     ftw() function as well to share most of the code.
+[10] Extend regex and/or rx to work with wide characters and complete
+     implementation of character class and collation class handling.

 
 

-**** Almost done!
+     It is planned to do a complete rewrite.

 
 

+***  We have now multibyte character support.  But a rewrite is still
+     necessary.

 
 

-[ 8] Write AVL-tree based tsearch() et.al. functions.  Currently only
-     a very simple algorithm is used.
-     There is a public domain version but using this would cause problems
-     with the assignment.

 
 

+[11] Write access function for netmasks, bootparams, and automount
+     databases for nss_files and nss_db module.
+     The functions should be embedded in the nss scheme.  This is not
+     hard and not all services must be supported at once.

 
 

-[ 9] Extend regex and/or rx to work with wide characters and complete
-     implementation of character class and collation class handling.

 
 

-     It is planed to do a complete rewrite.
+[15] Cleaning up the header files.  Ideally, each header style should
+     follow the "good examples".  Each variable and function should have
+     a short description of the function and its parameters.  The prototypes
+     should always contain variable names which can help to identify their
+     meaning; better than
+
+               int foo (int, int, int, int);
+
+     Blargh!
+
+***  The conformtest.pl tool helps cleaning the namespace.  As far as
+     known the prototypes all contain parameter names.  But maybe some
+     comments can be improved.

 
 
 
 

-[10] Add mmap() support to malloc().
-     Doug Lea's malloc implementation might give some ideas.  Perhaps
-     switching completly to his implementation is an option if it
-     a) can work without mmap() support (not all system GNU libc
-       is running on have mmap)
-     b) is without mmap support at least as fast as the current
-       implementation
-     c) will be extended with the current hooks and additional functions
+[16] The libio stream file functions should be extended in a way to use
+     mmap to map the file and use it as the buffer to user sees.  For
+     read-only streams this should be rather easy and it avoids all read()
+     calls.

 
 

-     Please contact bug-glibc@prep.ai.mit.edu before starting to avoid
-     duplicated work.
+     A more sophisticated solution would use mmap also for writing.  The
+     standards do not demand that the file on the disk is always in the
+     correct form so it would be possible to enlarge it always according
+     to the page size and install the correct length only for fclose() and
+     fflush() calls.

 
 
 
 

-[11] Write access function for netmasks, bootparams, publickey, automount,
-     and aliases databases for nss_files and nss_db module.
-     The functions should be embedded in the nss scheme.  This is not
-     hard and not all services must be supported at once.
+[18] Based on the sprof program we need tools to analyze the output.  The
+     result should be a link map which specifies in which order the .o
+     files are placed in the shared object.  This should help to improve
+     code locality and result in a smaller foorprint (in code and data
+     memory) since less pages are only used in small parts.
+
+
+[19] A user-level STREAMS implementation should be available if the
+     kernel does not provide the support.
+
+***  This is a much lower priority job now that STREAMS are optional in
+     XPG.
+
+
+[20] More conversion modules for iconv(3).  Existing modules should be
+     extended to do things like transliteration if this is wanted.
+     For often used conversion a direct conversion function should be
+     available.
+
+
+[21] The nscd program and the stubs in the libc should be changed so
+     that each program uses only one socket connect.  Take a look at
+       http://www.cygnus.com/~drepper/nscd.html
+
+     An alternative approach is to use an mmap()ed file.  The idea is
+     the following:
+     - the nscd creates the hash tables and the information it stores
+       in it in a mmap()ed region.  This means no pointers must be
+       used, only offsets.
+     OR
+       if POSIX shared memory is available use a named shared memory
+       region to put the data in
+     - each program using NSS functionality tries to open the file
+       with the data.
+     - by checking some timestamp (which the nscd renews frequently)
+       the programs can test whether the file is still valid
+     - if the file is valid look through the nscd and locate the
+       appropriate hash table for the database and lookup the data.
+       If it is included we are set.
+     - if the data is not yet in the database we contact the nscd using
+       the currently implemented methods.
+
+
+[22] It should be possible to have the information gconv-modules in
+     a simple cache which is faster to access.  Using libdb is probably
+     overkill and loading it would probably be slower than reading the
+     plain text file.  But a file format with a simple hash table and
+     some data it points to should be fine.  Probably it should be
+     two tables, one for the aliases, one for the mappings.  The code
+     should start similar to this:

 
 

+       if (stat ("gconv-modules", &stp) == 0
+           && stat ("gconv-modules.db", &std) == 0
+           && stp.st_mtime < std.st_mtime)
+         {
+           ... use the cache ...
+         {
+       else
+         {
+           ... use the plain file if it exists, otherwise the db ...
+         }

 
 

-[12] Rewrite utmp/wtmp functions to use database functions.  This is much
-     better than the normal flat file format.

 
 

-     Please contact bug-glibc@prep.ai.mit.edu before starting to avoid
-     duplicated work.
+[23] The `strptime' function needs to be completed.  This includes among
+     other things that it must get teached about timezones.  The solution
+     envisioned is to extract the timezones from the ADO timezone
+     specifications.  Special care must be given names which are used
+     multiple times.  Here the precedence should (probably) be according
+     to the geograhical distance.  E.g., the timezone EST should be
+     treated as the `Eastern Australia Time' instead of the US `Eastern
+     Standard Time' if the current TZ variable is set to, say,
+     Australia/Canberra or if the current locale is en_AU.
+
+
+[25] Sun's nscd version implements a feature where the nscd keeps N entries
+     for each database current.  I.e., if an entries lifespan is over and
+     it is one of the N entries to be kept the nscd updates the information
+     instead of removing the entry.
+
+     How to decide about which N entries to keep has to be examined.
+     Factors should be number of uses (of course), influenced by aging.
+     Just imagine a computer used by several people.  The IDs of the current
+     user should be preferred even if the last user spent more time.
+
+
+[26] ...done