Re: 64 bit time_t changes

["Steven M. Bellovin" <smb%cs.columbia.edu@localhost>]

On Sun, 23 Mar 2008 01:16:45 +0100 (CET)
Havard Eidnes <he%NetBSD.org@localhost> wrote:

> > | First -- will 5.0 ship with the old libc?  If not, I assume that
> > all | binaries, both pkgsrc and user-written, will have to be
> > recompiled.
> >
> > We will ship with the libc.12 and old binaries will work.
> 
> How will we ship libc.12, and how will we maintain it?  As part of the
> base system build, or as a binary compatibility package out of pkgsrc?

Precisely what I was getting at.  I don't see many other ways to do it
than to clone the tree and -- for the next two major releases, at least
-- to compile and install it.  Or rather, I don't think we want to be
in the position of shipping the 4.x binaries around without any way to
rebuild them, because that leaves us without any easy way to handle
security patches or comparatively minor changes to go along with minor
kernel changes.

Note that I'm not disagreeing with the suggestion; I'm just trying to
understand all of the implications.


                --Steve Bellovin, http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~smb