Package: glibc Version: 2.3.1 Severity: critical ... and yes, it is "critical", even if it only affects Emacs maintainers. When it manifests, it's quite possible that the whole system will break.
After upgrading to glibc 2.3.1, I can't build XEmacs without the portable dumper, at least the following versions: 21.4.9, 21.4.10rc1, 21.4.10rc2, 21.4.10rc3, 21.4.10. All build on glibc 2.2.5 systems. A related build problem with XEmacs is reported for bleeding edge Red Hat, and similar symptoms are reported for Irix building with gcc, but I don't know if those are related. I would assume this will also affect GNU Emacs and possibly other applications that use "unexec" to build preloaded versions. Workaround for XEmacs: build with configure --pdump. The "portable dumper" is now considered reliable. The reasons for not using it by default are basically cosmetic, although startup is perceptibly (0.5 to 1.0 sec) slower in the default configuration. The real problem is that if you try to back up to glibc 2.2.5 (and I assume other earlier releases), you get an unusable system because tar, and therefore dpkg, breaks, complaining that "required GLIBC_2.3" is not available. (That error message is probably inaccurate, but _you_ figure it out; I'm not going to rebreak my system to reproduce it. Dammit, for libc, of all packages, it is not acceptable to break backward compatibility, even if upstream does! There always has to be the escape hatch of reversion to previous.) So do all the basic system utilities that aptitude upgraded at the same time. -- System Information Debian Release: testing/unstable Kernel Version: Linux tleepslib 2.2.18 #1 SMP Tue Dec 26 11:36:10 JST 2000 i686 Pentium II (Deschutes) GenuineIntel GNU/Linux -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
