[Nix-dev] Re: Please update of stdenv-linux tarballs

[Eelco Dolstra]

Hi,

On 11/02/2010 12:49 PM, Peter Simons wrote:

> Hi Lluís,
>
>   >  I still don't know what problem can come from having a newer glibc in
>   >  the bootstrap-tools.
>
> yes, obviously, you don't consider that kind of change a big deal. My
> impression is that you are fairly alone with that conviction, i.e.
> you'll have a have hard time finding many Linux distributions that
> bootstrap their system with glibc 2.12.1.
>
> Anyway, you are missing the point. What bothers me more than the update
> itself is the lack of advance communication regarding that update.

Well, Lluis did make these changes on a branch which exists precisely so 
that we can experiment with these things before we inflict them on the 
trunk :-)

>   >  - What linux kernel runs CentOS? At least the version, please.
>   >  - What makes you think the glibc version is the important difference in
>   >    determining what runs and what not? Couldn't be it the kernel headers?
>   >  - What have you been doing, in detail, to get nixpkgs built on your CentOS?
>
> Eelco, a while ago you posted the URL of a bug report with Red Hat that
> describes the problem in some technical detail. I didn't copy that URL
> and cannot find it right now. Do you still have it? And if, could you
> please post it again?

I was going to ask you the same thing :-)  I vaguely remember that there 
have been several problems, but I think it's this one:

   http://sourceware.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=5227

But unless there is some patch to Glibc that works around the problem on 
old Red Hat kernels without breaking anything on other kernels, I don't 
think we should try to support an old, obsolete, broken Red Hat kernel. 
  Note that you can still build Nixpkgs on such kernels by using the old 
bootstrap binaries (just do an "svn up -r24522 
pkgs/stdenv/linux/bootstrap/i686/default.nix").  We could also have some 
Nixpkgs option to select the old bootstrap binaries and Glibc.

Eelco.