[Python-Dev] Updating to autoconf 2.5x (original) (raw)

M.-A. Lemburg mal@lemburg.com
Fri, 05 Apr 2002 19:32:24 +0200

Guido van Rossum wrote:

> Side note: I recently found that the socket module is using > bleeding edge glibc APIs as well, in fact it was the only > module that needed the most recent glibc version installed > on my machine (2.1.2). Which API?

Rechecking the .so file with ldd and nm showed that the problem was due to the linker using a more current version of gethostbyname_r it found in GLIBC 2.1.2 rather than the one in GLIBC 2.1.

> All other modules were happy with plain glibc 2.1. I found > out about this when installing an application on RedHat which > didn't have glibc 2.1.2 installed. > > This may be a marginal problem, but do we really need to > live on the bleeding edge of C libraries ? And if so, is > there a way to configure Python to only use, say, glibc 2.1 > APIs (to enhance binary compatibility) ?

If we're using bleeding edge APIs, they should be properly tested for in configure.in and the code should use #ifdef.

Agreed.

In this case, I think, it was a false alarm though, since AFAIK, we can't tell the linker to only use one GLIBC version (_socket.so links to APIs from three different versions on my machine: GLIBC 2.0, 2.1 and 2.1.2).

BTW, the man-page for ld mentions an optimization option -On -- does anyone know what the affect of this option is and whether its GNU specific ?

-- Marc-Andre Lemburg CEO eGenix.com Software GmbH

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