[RFC] glibc-2.14 and RPC

[RFC] glibc-2.14 and RPC

[Yann E. MORIN]

Hello All!

The Sun RPC has been obsoleted in glibc-2.14: the SunRPC headers have been
removed. It is now recommended to use the TI-RPC (Transport Independent RPC)
library [1] [2].

'Obsoleted in glibc-2.14' means:
- programs can no longer be compiled, as headers are missing
- already compiled programs can still run, as the libraries are still
  packaged

What this means to crosstool-NG: basically, not much.

In fact, we can look at the big picture, and consider that the RPC are a
non-system feature, and thus need not be implemented by a system library.
It is the responsibility of the user to properly add TI-RPC to its
environment before compiling programs that require RPC. In this situation,
we should do nothing at all.

OTOH, the SunRPC has long been provided by the C library, and people got
used to that situation. A missing RPC lib no longer provided by the system
components might be seen as a big breakage. In this situation, we could
build TI-RPC as part of the toolchain build, for a finite transition period
(say 'n' days, n probably no bigger than 365.25).

But I still did not had  look at TI-RPC, and how nicely it plays with
cross-compilation, what its dependencies are, and well, all those issues
we will probably (!) encounter.

One thing to know is that TI-RPC is not a drop-in replacement for the glibc
version. At least, it now requires to link programs against -ltirpc. We
could try to mitigate this by providing appropriate symlinks, but is it
worth the effort?

So, what is your opinion on the subject?
- do not provide RPC as a system component,
or:
- transition with TI-RPC.

[1] http://nfsv4.bullopensource.org/doc/tirpc_rpcbind.php (seems old)
[2] http://sourceforge.net/projects/libtirpc/ (seems current)

Regards,
Yann E. MORIN.

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Re: [RFC] glibc-2.14 and RPC

[Khem Raj]

On 07/05/2011 03:41 PM, Yann E. MORIN wrote:
> Hello All!
>
> The Sun RPC has been obsoleted in glibc-2.14: the SunRPC headers have been
> removed. It is now recommended to use the TI-RPC (Transport Independent RPC)
> library [1] [2].
>
> 'Obsoleted in glibc-2.14' means:
> - programs can no longer be compiled, as headers are missing
> - already compiled programs can still run, as the libraries are still
>    packaged
>
> What this means to crosstool-NG: basically, not much.
>
> In fact, we can look at the big picture, and consider that the RPC are a
> non-system feature, and thus need not be implemented by a system library.
> It is the responsibility of the user to properly add TI-RPC to its
> environment before compiling programs that require RPC. In this situation,
> we should do nothing at all.
>
> OTOH, the SunRPC has long been provided by the C library, and people got
> used to that situation. A missing RPC lib no longer provided by the system
> components might be seen as a big breakage. In this situation, we could
> build TI-RPC as part of the toolchain build, for a finite transition period
> (say 'n' days, n probably no bigger than 365.25).
>
> But I still did not had  look at TI-RPC, and how nicely it plays with
> cross-compilation, what its dependencies are, and well, all those issues
> we will probably (!) encounter.
>
> One thing to know is that TI-RPC is not a drop-in replacement for the glibc
> version. At least, it now requires to link programs against -ltirpc. We
> could try to mitigate this by providing appropriate symlinks, but is it
> worth the effort?
>
> So, what is your opinion on the subject?

libtirpc needs more to become drop in replacement into glibc provided 
rpc see my hacks

http://git.openembedded.org/cgit.cgi/openembedded-core-contrib/log/?h=kraj/eglibc-2.14

but IMO crosstool is just for toolchains so better leave this headache
to distros that will make ct-ng generate external toolchains to fit well
too

> - do not provide RPC as a system component,
> or:
> - transition with TI-RPC.
>
> [1] http://nfsv4.bullopensource.org/doc/tirpc_rpcbind.php (seems old)
> [2] http://sourceforge.net/projects/libtirpc/ (seems current)
>
> Regards,
> Yann E. MORIN.
>


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