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-rw-r--r--FAQ.in40
1 files changed, 21 insertions, 19 deletions
diff --git a/FAQ.in b/FAQ.in
index 32678a2f0a..73eb0ad159 100644
--- a/FAQ.in
+++ b/FAQ.in
@@ -69,7 +69,7 @@ EGCS and with GCC 2.8.1. See ?exception for details.
?? When I try to compile glibc I get only error messages.
What's wrong?
-{UD} You definitely need GNU make to translate GNU libc. No other make
+{UD} You definitely need GNU make to build GNU libc. No other make
program has the needed functionality.
We recommend version GNU make version 3.75 or 3.77. Versions before 3.75
@@ -168,7 +168,7 @@ when using the library do not need to match. The GNU C library runs without
problems on kernels that are older than the kernel headers used. The other
way round (compiling the GNU C library with old kernel headers and running
on a recent kernel) does not necessarily work. For example you can't use
-new kernel features when using old kernel headers for compiling the GNU C
+new kernel features if you used old kernel headers to compile the GNU C
library.
{ZW} Even if you are using a 2.0 kernel on your machine, we recommend you
@@ -282,18 +282,18 @@ with a library that was build this way, we advise you to rebuild the library
without --enable-omitfp. If the problem vanishes consider tracking the
problem down and report it as compiler failure.
-Since a library build with --enable-omitfp is undebuggable on most systems,
-debuggable libraries are also built - you can use it by appending "_g" to
+Since a library built with --enable-omitfp is undebuggable on most systems,
+debuggable libraries are also built - you can use them by appending "_g" to
the library names.
The compilation of these extra libraries and the compiler optimizations slow
down the build process and need more disk space.
-?? I get failures during `make check'. What shall I do?
+?? I get failures during `make check'. What should I do?
-{AJ} The testsuite should compile and run cleanly on your system, every
-failure should be looked into. Depending on the failure I wouldn't advise
-installing the library at all.
+{AJ} The testsuite should compile and run cleanly on your system; every
+failure should be looked into. Depending on the failures, you probably
+should not install the library at all.
You should consider using the `glibcbug' script to report the failure,
providing as much detail as possible. If you run a test directly, please
@@ -303,13 +303,15 @@ command line which failed and run the test from the subdirectory for this
test in the sources.
There are some failures which are not directly related to the GNU libc:
-- Some compiler produce buggy code. The egcs 1.1 release should be ok. gcc
- 2.8.1 might cause some failures, gcc 2.7.2.x is so buggy, that explicit
- checks have been used so that you can't build with it.
+- Some compilers produce buggy code. No compiler gets single precision
+ complex numbers correct on Alpha. Otherwise, the egcs 1.1 release should be
+ ok; gcc 2.8.1 might cause some failures; gcc 2.7.2.x is so buggy that
+ explicit checks have been used so that you can't build with it.
- The kernel might have bugs. For example on Linux/Alpha 2.0.34 the
floating point handling has quite a number of bugs and therefore most of
the test cases in the math subdirectory will fail. Linux 2.2 has
- fixes for the floating point support on Alpha.
+ fixes for the floating point support on Alpha. The Linux/SPARC kernel has
+ also some bugs in the FPU emulation code (as of Linux 2.2.0).
?? What is symbol versioning good for? Do I need it?
@@ -318,15 +320,15 @@ changes. One version of an interface might have been introduced in a
previous version of the GNU C library but the interface or the semantics of
the function has been changed in the meantime. For binary compatibility
with the old library, a newer library needs to still have the old interface
-for old programs. On the other hand new programs should use the new
+for old programs. On the other hand, new programs should use the new
interface. Symbol versioning is the solution for this problem. The GNU
-libc version 2.1 uses by default symbol versioning if the binutils support
-it.
+libc version 2.1 uses symbol versioning by default if the installed binutils
+supports it.
-We don't advise to build without symbol versioning since you lose binary
-compatibility if you do - for ever! The binary compatibility you lose is
-not only against the previous version of the GNU libc (version 2.0) but also
-against future versions.
+We don't advise building without symbol versioning, since you lose binary
+compatibility - forever! The binary compatibility you lose is not only
+against the previous version of the GNU libc (version 2.0) but also against
+all future versions.
? Installation and configuration issues