About removing libc wrapper

[pcpa at mandriva.com.br]

  Hi,

  First forgive me if I am missing something.

  Would not it be better to keep/fix it? We already have modules
depending on things like c99 math symbols, libdl symbols, libxfont*
symbols, etc. And maybe soon depending on libhal, libdbus, etc,
and anything else a module chooses to link with.
  If it works with libc variants, and compiles/works with other C
compilers, it should not be a big problem. But besides there are
some clear exceptions, like mesa that should not use wrappers for
things like ``mathfuncf'' at least in software rendering mode, I
think it should be better to have modules depending only on
symbols in another module, or the X Server.
  I don't think we are going to have a sdk that would allow a
vendor to distribe binaries that "just works" on Linux, FreeBSD,
OpenBSD, NetBSD, Solaris, etc, anytime soon, and "killing" the
libc wrapper basically gives up on the hope of having that working,
unless something better is being worked on.
  "Binary only" vendor also usually provide their own libGL, video
processing library, etc, so that is probably another reason to
give up on hope about having a "binary compatible" api for
different operating systems in the same processor architecture...

  There are other problems also, like modules using Linux only
interfaces, or doing their own signal handling, creating pipes/fifos
to communicate with other processes and the like.
  But a well thought api, that is another thing we are not likely
to have anytime soon, would prevent problems like modules
having a very small "lifetime" and needing to be rebuilt
frequently.

Paulo