[lsb-discuss] Source databases?

[anderson at freestandards.org]

On Tue, 15 Jul 2003, Mike Hearn wrote:

> Hi,
>
> I'm trying to find and set up the database system you guys use to
> generate the spec, in the hope of adapting it to generate headers for
> rewinding symbol version. Maybe I'm just being slow, but I can't find
> the actual databases anywhere.

Currently, it lives in the data/dbdump directory.

> I find the layout of the LSB CVS
> repository really confusing - parts appear to be abandoned, there is no
> overall layout README that I can see, and the modules are not especially
> intuitively named.

We do too, and plan on spending some time next week at OLS discussing how to
make it better. Note that it has just grown and mutated over 6 years, so it
has accumulated lots of cruft.

> BTW, I'm hoping we can get around the problem where you need stub libs
> to stop you linking accidentally against something not in the spec by
> having the headers contain, for instance
>
> __asm__("someFunc,someFunc at NOT_IN_SPEC");
>
> ie, at link time, the NOT_IN_SPEC version won't be found and linking
> will fail. I still need to try it, but I think it'd work.

That will probably work, but it has the problem that the set of "someFunc" is
unbounded, and will require regular maintainence to ensure that at least
everything which might be seen in the real version of a library is included
in that set.

It is sort for the inverse of that approach the stub libraries takes. Either
include only the desired set, or try to exclude the set of non-desired things.

> I need to be able to generate the headers first though. One approach I
> might take is to simply write a new header generated from the LSB
> version scripts, which I *have* found, that contains these asm
> statements, then merge it with one generated from my own libc (RH9) and
> ensure that the new symbols get versions that will prevent them from
> linking.

The header generating script is in src/include/mkheader.

                                Stuart

anderson at freestandards.org                             Free Standards Group
Lead Developer, Written Specification                  Linux Standard Base
1024D/37A79149:                                        0791 D3B8 9A4C 2CDC A31F
                                                       BD03 0A62 E534 37A7 9149