Hi! > Can someone describe in a few sentences why it is so "dangerous" to > install a newer version of glibc.
In a few words. Everything in your system depends on glibc. Normally, one should emerge world if glibc is updated. IOW, it means that all utilities/programs use glibc (the DL version). Even the kernel uses glibc (the static version, obviously, since the dynamic loader isn't in the kernel). So if this lib is broken, your whole system is broken. Nothing works anymore... > And also what is the gain from getting NPTL? Do you think it improves > performance very much? When is it suppose to be part of the stable > version? Sure it does improve performance... But only for multi-threaded applications. I don't know if you are much involved with Pthread programming. When not, then I would stick to the standard LinuxThreads (provided on every 'stable' version of Gentoo). Even if it's not the "bleeding edge of the technology", that's something that *WORKS*. NPTL is still under development... As an avid Pthread programmer, LT is just annoying me because it's departs from POSIX in some aspects (notably, the signal stuff) and it's "slow" by designed... I want try to the new NPTL technology. NPTL (Native Posix Thread Library) is developped by Ulrich Drepper, one of the main glibc maintainer. This guy works now at Red-Hat. So that's not really a surprise that RH v9.0 was the first distro (AFAIK) to support officially NPTL (it was I believe v0.28). Personally, I can't afford v0.28, because the stack upwinding is broken in many places. BTW v0.28 is the official NPTL release supported by the 'stable' glibc (you have to enable it explicitely in the USE flag, though)... Luis gave you an interesting link as starter. If you like more info about NPTL, a good document of Ulrich can be found at: people.redhat.com/drepper/nptl-design.pdf (this doc assumes that you know already much about Pthreads). Regards, Loic. -- COMPUTERBILD 15/03: Premium-e-mail-Dienste im Test -------------------------------------------------- 1. GMX TopMail - Platz 1 und Testsieger! 2. GMX ProMail - Platz 2 und Preis-Qualit�tssieger! 3. Arcor - 4. web.de - 5. T-Online - 6. freenet.de - 7. daybyday - 8. e-Post -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list
