241 lines
11 KiB
HTML
241 lines
11 KiB
HTML
![]() |
<!--#include file="header.html" -->
|
||
|
|
||
|
<h2>uClibc vs. glibc</h2>
|
||
|
|
||
|
<p>
|
||
|
uClibc and Glibc are not the same -- there are a number of differences which
|
||
|
may or may not cause you problems. This document attempts to list these
|
||
|
differences and, when completed, will contain a full list of all relevant
|
||
|
differences.
|
||
|
<br><br></p>
|
||
|
<ol>
|
||
|
<li>uClibc is smaller than glibc. We attempt to maintain a glibc compatible
|
||
|
interface, allowing applications that compile with glibc to easily compile with
|
||
|
uClibc. However, we do not include _everything_ that glibc includes, and
|
||
|
therefore some applications may not compile. If this happens to you, please
|
||
|
report the failure to the uclibc mailing list, with detailed error messages.
|
||
|
</li><br>
|
||
|
<li>uClibc is much more configurable then glibc. This means that a developer
|
||
|
may have compiled uClibc in such a way that significant amounts of
|
||
|
functionality have been omitted.
|
||
|
</li><br>
|
||
|
<li>uClibc does not even attempt to ensure binary compatibility across releases.
|
||
|
When a new version of uClibc is released, you may or may not need to recompile
|
||
|
all your binaries.
|
||
|
</li><br>
|
||
|
<li><ul><li> malloc(0) in glibc returns a valid pointer to something(!?!?) while in
|
||
|
uClibc calling malloc(0) returns a NULL. The behavior of malloc(0) is listed
|
||
|
as implementation-defined by SuSv3, so both libraries are equally correct.
|
||
|
This difference also applies to realloc(NULL, 0). I personally feel glibc's
|
||
|
behavior is not particularly safe. To enable glibc behavior, one has to
|
||
|
explicitly enable the MALLOC_GLIBC_COMPAT option.
|
||
|
</li><br><li>
|
||
|
glibc's malloc() implementation has behavior that is tunable via the
|
||
|
MALLOC_CHECK_ environment variable. This is primarily used to provide extra
|
||
|
malloc debugging features. These extended malloc debugging features are not
|
||
|
available within uClibc. There are many good malloc debugging libraries
|
||
|
available for Linux (dmalloc, electric fence, valgrind, etc) that work much
|
||
|
better than the glibc extended malloc debugging. So our omitting this
|
||
|
functionality from uClibc is not a great loss.
|
||
|
</li><br>
|
||
|
</ul></li>
|
||
|
<li>uClibc does not provide a database library (libdb).
|
||
|
</li><br>
|
||
|
<li>uClibc does not support NSS (/lib/libnss_*), which allows glibc to easily
|
||
|
support various methods of authentication and DNS resolution. uClibc only
|
||
|
supports flat password files and shadow password files for storing
|
||
|
authentication information. If you need something more complex than this,
|
||
|
you can compile and install pam.
|
||
|
</li><br>
|
||
|
<li>uClibc's libresolv is only a stub. Some, but not all of the functionality
|
||
|
provided by glibc's libresolv is provided internal to uClibc. Other functions
|
||
|
are not at all implemented.
|
||
|
</li><br>
|
||
|
<li>libnsl provides support for Network Information Service (NIS) which was
|
||
|
originally called "Yellow Pages" or "YP", which is an extension of RPC invented
|
||
|
by Sun to share Unix password files over the network. I personally think NIS
|
||
|
is an evil abomination and should not be used. These days, using ldap is much
|
||
|
more effective mechanism for doing the same thing. uClibc provides a stub
|
||
|
libnsl, but has no actual support for Network Information Service (NIS).
|
||
|
We therefore, also do not provide any of the headers files provided by glibc
|
||
|
under /usr/include/rpcsvc.
|
||
|
</li><br>
|
||
|
<li>uClibc's locale support is not 100% complete yet. We are working on it.
|
||
|
</li><br>
|
||
|
<li>uClibc's math library only supports long double as inlines, and even
|
||
|
then the long double support is quite limited. Also, very few of the
|
||
|
float math functions are implemented. Stick with double and you should
|
||
|
be just fine.
|
||
|
</li><br>
|
||
|
<li>uClibc's libcrypt does not support the reentrant crypt_r, setkey_r and
|
||
|
encrypt_r, since these are not required by SuSv3.
|
||
|
</li><br>
|
||
|
<li>uClibc directly uses kernel types to define most opaque data types.
|
||
|
</li><br>
|
||
|
<li>uClibc directly uses the linux kernel's arch specific 'stuct stat'.
|
||
|
</li><br>
|
||
|
<li>uClibc's librt library currently lacks all aio routines, all clock
|
||
|
routines, and all shm routines (only the timer routines and the mq
|
||
|
routines are implemented).
|
||
|
</li><br>
|
||
|
</ol>
|
||
|
<hr>
|
||
|
<h3>Manuel's Notes</h3>
|
||
|
|
||
|
Some general comments...<br>
|
||
|
<p>
|
||
|
The intended target for all my uClibc code is ANSI/ISO C99 and SUSv3
|
||
|
compliance. While some glibc extensions are present, many will eventually
|
||
|
be configurable. Also, even when present, the glibc-like extensions may
|
||
|
differ slightly or be more restrictive than the native glibc counterparts.
|
||
|
They are primarily meant to be porting _aides_ and not necessarily
|
||
|
drop-in replacements.
|
||
|
</p><br>
|
||
|
Now for some details...<br><br>
|
||
|
|
||
|
<u>time functions</u><br>
|
||
|
<ol>
|
||
|
<li>Leap seconds are not supported.</li><br>
|
||
|
<li>/etc/timezone and the whole zoneinfo directory tree are not supported.
|
||
|
To set the timezone, set the TZ environment variable as specified in
|
||
|
http://www.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/007904975/basedefs/xbd_chap08.html
|
||
|
or you may also create an /etc/TZ file of a single line, ending with a
|
||
|
newline, containing the TZ setting. For example
|
||
|
echo CST6CDT > /etc/TZ
|
||
|
</li><br>
|
||
|
<li>Currently, locale specific eras and alternate digits are not supported.
|
||
|
They are on my TODO list.
|
||
|
</li>
|
||
|
</ol><br>
|
||
|
<u>wide char support</u><br>
|
||
|
<ol>
|
||
|
<li>The only multibyte encoding currently supported is UTF-8. The various
|
||
|
ISO-8859-* encodings are (optionally) supported. The internal
|
||
|
representation of wchar's is assumed to be 31 bit unicode values in
|
||
|
native endian representation. Also, the underlying char encoding is
|
||
|
assumed to match ASCII in the range 0-0x7f.
|
||
|
</li>
|
||
|
<li>In the next iteration of locale support, I plan to add support for
|
||
|
(at least some) other multibyte encodings.
|
||
|
</li>
|
||
|
</ol>
|
||
|
<u>locale support</u><br>
|
||
|
<ol>
|
||
|
<li>The target for support is SUSv3 locale functionality. While nl_langinfo
|
||
|
has been extended, similar to glibc, it only returns values for related
|
||
|
locale entries.
|
||
|
</li>
|
||
|
<li>Currently, all SUSv3 libc locale functionality should be implemented
|
||
|
except for wcsftime and collating item support in regex.
|
||
|
</li>
|
||
|
</ol>
|
||
|
<u>stdio</u><br>
|
||
|
<ol>
|
||
|
<li>Conversion of large magnitude floating-point values by printf suffers a loss
|
||
|
of precision due to the algorithm used.
|
||
|
</li><br>
|
||
|
<li>uClibc's printf is much stricter than glibcs, especially regarding positional
|
||
|
args. The entire format string is parsed first and an error is returned if
|
||
|
a problem is detected. In locales other than C, the format string is checked
|
||
|
to be a valid multibyte sequence as well. Also, currently at most 10 positional
|
||
|
args are allowed (although this is configurable).
|
||
|
</li><br>
|
||
|
<li>BUFSIZ is configurable, but no attempt is made at automatic tuning of internal
|
||
|
buffer sizes for stdio streams. In fact, the stdio code in general sacrifices
|
||
|
sophistication/performace for minimal size.
|
||
|
</li><br>
|
||
|
<li>uClibc allows glibc-like custom printf functions. However, while not
|
||
|
currently checked, the specifier must be <= 0x7f.
|
||
|
</li><br>
|
||
|
<li>uClibc allows glibc-like custom streams. However, no in-buffer seeking is
|
||
|
done.
|
||
|
</li><br>
|
||
|
<li>The functions fcloseall() and __fpending() can behave differently than their
|
||
|
glibc counterparts.
|
||
|
</li><br>
|
||
|
<li>uClibc's setvbuf is more restrictive about when it can be called than glibc's
|
||
|
is. The standards specify that setvbuf must occur before any other operations
|
||
|
take place on the stream.
|
||
|
</li><br>
|
||
|
<li>Right now, %m is not handled properly by printf when the format uses positional
|
||
|
args.
|
||
|
</li><br>
|
||
|
<li>The FILEs created by glibc's fmemopen(), open_memstream(), and fopencookie()
|
||
|
are not capable of wide orientation. The corresponding uClibc routines do
|
||
|
not have this limitation.
|
||
|
</li><br>
|
||
|
<li>For scanf, the C99 standard states "The fscanf function returns the value of
|
||
|
the macro EOF if an input failure occurs before any conversion." But glibc's
|
||
|
scanf does not respect conversions for which assignment was surpressed, even
|
||
|
though the standard states that the value is converted but not stored.
|
||
|
</li></ol><br>
|
||
|
<hr><h3>Glibc bugs</h3><br>
|
||
|
glibc bugs that Ulrich Drepper has refused to acknowledge or comment on
|
||
|
( <a href="http://sources.redhat.com/ml/libc-alpha/2003-09/">http://sources.redhat.com/ml/libc-alpha/2003-09/</a> )
|
||
|
<br>
|
||
|
<ol>
|
||
|
<li>The C99 standard says that for printf, a %s conversion makes no special
|
||
|
provisions for multibyte characters. SUSv3 is even more clear, stating
|
||
|
that bytes are written and a specified precision is in bytes. Yet glibc
|
||
|
treats the arg as a multibyte string when a precision is specified and
|
||
|
not otherwise.
|
||
|
</li><br>
|
||
|
<li>Both C99 and C89 state that the %c conversion for scanf reads the exact
|
||
|
number of bytes specified by the optional field width (or 1 if not specified).
|
||
|
uClibc complies with the standard. There is an argument that perhaps the
|
||
|
specified width should be treated as an upper bound, based on some historical
|
||
|
use. However, such behavior should be mentioned in the Conformance document.
|
||
|
</li><br>
|
||
|
<li>glibc's scanf is broken regarding some numeric patterns. Some invalid
|
||
|
strings are accepted as valid ("0x.p", "1e", digit grouped strings).
|
||
|
In spite of my posting examples clearly illustrating the bugs, they remain
|
||
|
unacknowledged by the glibc developers.
|
||
|
</li><br>
|
||
|
<li>glibc's scanf seems to require a 'p' exponent for hexadecimal float strings.
|
||
|
According to the standard, this is optional.
|
||
|
</li><br>
|
||
|
<li>C99 requires that once an EOF is encountered, the stream should be treated
|
||
|
as if at end-of-file even if more data becomes available. Further reading
|
||
|
can be attempted by clearing the EOF flag though, via clearerr() or a file
|
||
|
positioning function. For details concerning the original change, see
|
||
|
Defect Report #141. glibc is currently non-compliant, and the developers
|
||
|
did not comment when I asked for their official position on this issue.
|
||
|
</li><br>
|
||
|
<li>glibc's collation routines and/or localedef are broken regarding implicit
|
||
|
and explicit UNDEFINED rules.
|
||
|
</li><br></ol>
|
||
|
More to follow as I think of it...
|
||
|
<br><br><hr>
|
||
|
<h3>Profiling:</h3>
|
||
|
<p>
|
||
|
uClibc no longer supports 'gcc -fprofile-arcs -pg' style profiling, which
|
||
|
causes your application to generate a 'gmon.out' file that can then be analyzed
|
||
|
by 'gprof'. Not only does this require explicit extra support in uClibc, it
|
||
|
requires that you rebuild everything with profiling support. There is both a
|
||
|
size and performance penalty to profiling your applications this way, as well
|
||
|
as Heisenberg effects, where the act of measuring changes what is measured.
|
||
|
</p>
|
||
|
<p>
|
||
|
There exist a number of less invasive alternatives that do not require you to
|
||
|
specially instrument your application, and recompile and relink everything.
|
||
|
</p><p>
|
||
|
The OProfile system-wide profiler is an excellent alternative:
|
||
|
<a href="http://oprofile.sourceforge.net/">http://oprofile.sourceforge.net/</a>
|
||
|
</p><p>
|
||
|
Many people have had good results using the combination of Valgrind
|
||
|
to generate profiling information and KCachegrind for analysis:
|
||
|
<a href="http://developer.kde.org/~sewardj/">http://developer.kde.org/~sewardj/</a>
|
||
|
<a href="http://kcachegrind.sourceforge.net/">http://kcachegrind.sourceforge.net/</a>
|
||
|
</p><p>
|
||
|
Prospect is another alternative based on OProfile:
|
||
|
<a href="http://prospect.sourceforge.net/">http://prospect.sourceforge.net/</a>
|
||
|
</p><p>
|
||
|
And the Linux Trace Toolkit (LTT) is also a fine tool:
|
||
|
<a href="http://www.opersys.com/LTT/">http://www.opersys.com/LTT/</a>
|
||
|
</p><p>
|
||
|
FunctionCheck:
|
||
|
<a href="http://www710.univ-lyon1.fr/~yperret/fnccheck/">http://www710.univ-lyon1.fr/~yperret/fnccheck/</a>
|
||
|
</p>
|
||
|
|
||
|
<!--#include file="footer.html" -->
|