Open jobs for finishing GNU libc:
---------------------------------
-Status: April 1997
+Status: October 2004
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
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).
-
-
-[ 5] Write wordexp() function; this is described in POSIX.2, the
- header <wordexp.h> already exists.
-
- Implementation idea: use some functions from bash.
-
-**** Somebody is working on this. Help may or may not be appreciated.
-
-
-[ 6] 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).
-
-**** Partly done. But we need someone with numerical experiences for
- the rest.
-
-
-[ 7] Several math functions have to be written:
-
- - exp2
- - nearbyint
- - round
- - roundtol
- - roundtoll
-
- each with float, double, and long double arguments. Writing these
- functions should be possible when following the implementation of
- the existing exp/log functions for other bases.
-
- Beside this most of the complex math functions which are new in
- ISO C 9X. gcc already has support for numbers of complex type so the
- implementation should be possible today. I mention here the names
- and the way to write them (argument is z = x + iy):
-
- - sin(z) = 1/(2i) (e^(iz) - e^-(iz)) = sin(x) cosh(y) + i cos(x) sinh(y)
- - cos(z) = 1/2 (e^(iz) + e^-(iz)) = cos(x) cosh(y) - i sin(x) sinh(y)
- - tan(z) = 1/i (e^(iz) - e^-(iz))/(e^(iz) + e^-(iz))
- - cot(z) = i (e^(iz) + e^-(iz))/(e^(iz) - e^-(iz))
- - asin(z) = -i ln(iz + sqrt(1-z^2))
- - acos(z) = -i ln(z + sqrt(z^2-1))
- - atan(z) = 1/(2i) ln((1+iz)/(1-iz))
- - acot(z) = -1/(2i) ln((iz+1)/(iz-1))
- - tanh(z) = (e^z - e^-z)/(e^z + e^-z)
- - coth(z) = (e^z + e^-z)/(e^z - e^-z)
-
- All functions should we written with all the parallelism in mind.
- And assembler versions are highly expreciated since, e.g., the ix87
- FPU provides an `fsincos' instructions which is certainly useful for
- the `sin' function. The implementations for the normal math functions
- shows other optimization techniques.
+ ftp://ftp.gnu.org/pub/gnu/ABOUT-NLS
+ for the current status (of course better use a mirror of ftp.gnu.org).
[ 8] If you enjoy assembler programming (as I do --drepper :-) you might
work.
-[ 9] Write nftw() function. Perhaps it might be good to reimplement the
- ftw() function as well to share most of the code.
-
-**** Almost done!
-
-
-[10] 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.
-
-
[11] Write access function for netmasks, bootparams, and automount
- databases for nss_files and nss_db module.
+ databases for nss_files, nss_nis, and nss_nisplus modules.
The functions should be embedded in the nss scheme. This is not
hard and not all services must be supported at once.
-[12] Rewrite utmp/wtmp functions to use database functions. This is much
- better than the normal flat file format.
+[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!
-**** There are plans for a new approach to this problem. Please contact
- bug-glibc@prep.ai.mit.edu before starting to work.)
+*** 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.
-[13] Several more or less small functions have to be written:
+[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 footprint (in code and data
+ memory) since less pages are only used in small parts.
- + tcgetid() and waitid() from XPG4.2
- + grantpt(), ptsname(), unlockpt() from XPG4.2
- + getdate() from XPG4.2
- *** Probably underway
- + fmtmsg() from SVID
- *** Probably underway
- More information are available on request.
+[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.
-[14] We need to write a library for on-the-fly transformation of streams
- of text. In fact, this would be a recode-library (you know, GNU recode).
- This is needed in several places in the GNU libc and I already have
- rather concrete plans but so far no possibility to start this.
+[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.
-[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 __P ((int, int, int, int));
+[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.
- Blargh!
+
+[27] ...deleted...