Open jobs for finishing GNU libc: --------------------------------- Status: May 1996 If you have time and talent to take over any of the jobs below please contact ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ [ 1] Port to new platforms or test current version on formerly supported platforms. [ 2] Test compliance with standards. If you have access to recent standards (IEEE, ISO, ANSI, X/Open, ...) and/or test suites you could do some checks as the goal is to be compliant with all standards if they do not contradict each other. [ 3] Write translations for the GNU libc message for the so far unsupported languages. GNU libc is fully internationalized and users can immediately benefit from this. Take a look at the matrix in ftp://prep.ai.mit.edu/pub/gnu/ABOUT-NLS for the current status (of course better use a mirror of prep). [ 4] Write wordexp() function; this is described in POSIX.2, The header already exists. Implementation idea: use some functions from bash. [ 5] Write reentrent versions of crypt() et.al. Implementation idea: Define in struct crypt_data { <... all the needed data ...> }; and define additional functions char *crypt_r (__const char *__key, __const char *__salt, struct crypt_data *__data); void setkey_r (__const char *__key, struct crypt_data *__data); void encrypt_r (char *__block, int __edflag, struct crypt_data *__data); If possible the non-reentrent functions should use the reentrent ones. Because of the US export restrictions it might be a good idea if some non-american person does this job. [ 6] Write `long double' versions of the math functions. This should be done in collaboration with the NetBSD and FreeBSD people. The libm is in fact fdlibm (not the same as in Linux libc). [ 7] If you enjoy assembler programming (as I do --drepper :-) you might be interested in writing optimized versions for some functions. Especially the string handling functions can be optimized a lot. Take a look at Faster String Functions Henry Spencer, University of Toronto Usenix Winter '92, pp. 419--428 or just ask. Currently mostly i?86 optimized versions exist. [ 8] Write nftw() function. Perhaps it might be good to reimplement the ftw() function as well to share most of the code. [ 9] Write AVL-tree based tsearch() et.al. functions. Currently only a very simple algorithm is used. [10] Extend regex and/or rx to work with wide characters. [11] Add mmap() support to malloc(). Doug Lea's malloc implementation might give some ideas. Perhaps switching completly to his implementation is an option if it a) can work without mmap() support (not all system GNU libc is running on have mmap) b) is without mmap support at least as fast as the current implementation c) will be extended with the current hooks and additional functions