Re: [HACKERS] (: JDBC+(Sun ~3:pm MST) CVS :) -also question about regression tests - Mailing list pgsql-hackers

> > > > JDBC works
> > > > postgres works
> > > > platform : linux  (I'm not posting kernel version! it doesn't matter!! :)
> > > >       egcs-2.91.06    (gcc-2.8.0 with haifa scheduler + other updates)
> > > >       glibc-2.0.5c    from RedHat-5.0 distrib - should be stable
> > > >                       [but with full crypt, locale]

> > Hmm. A linux box is used to generate the expected results, so we need to be
> > more careful here. I suspect that you have date/time trouble reported earlier
> > by (Oliver?? can't find the e-mail, sorry). A few of the math functions in
> > glibc2.0.x were misbehaving, leading to troubles like '3 hours 59 minutes 60
> > seconds' rather than '4 hours' in timespan output.
> >
> > That person submitted patches, but they were pretty specific to the glibc2
> > problems. Of course, I've already got some ugly code in there because Solaris
> > had some similar broken math, so perhaps we should figure out how to extract
> > all of the busted code into the port-specific files?
>
> I'll say it again and again - glibc-2.0 is the _STANDARD_ (actually
> reference) platform for Unix.  All Unix.  Not just Linux.
> Adopted last year.
>
> If there's any problems with glibc-2 - that is BAD for postgres.  There
> HAVE been real bugs with glibc-2 : but they are very rare (thankfully :).

Great. Then when they get this bug out it will work on Postgres without changes.
I'll wait. If you want to pursue it on the glibc2 side and give them a patch
perhaps they will fix the bug faster.

The nature of the bug (if I recall; this has been going for a while now) is that
there are rounding behaviors in the math library which are at odds with other Unix
systems and with the *documented behaviors of the routines in question*. By my
standards, that counts as a bug. Happy to consider workarounds, but the patches
should be generic and testable, through configure, so that when glibc2 starts
behaving correctly there will be no need to hunt through the backend to find all
the kludge bug fixes.

<Whew, I feel better now>

The other good possibility is for Oliver to develop a patch kit (he has done so
already) which we can include in the v6.3 distribution to be applied only to
linux/glibc2. When the beta settles down perhaps Oliver can generate a new patch
kit which we can include?

btw, I'm running the same systems you are; RH5.0 is in the mail...

                                                      - Tom

> In other words - please fix it! :)
> [glibc-2 was adopted by Unix98 IIRC as the reference platform to base all
> libc's on.  Sure a nice change to have public/GNU software providing the
> specs... :]  (the last time was BSD's telnet/ftp varient - a LONG time ago
> IIRC)