The "Linux libc" fork of
the GNU C
Library is now a mostly forgotten event. The fork lived from
1994 to 1997/8 - just before my time - but I've found interesting
accounts of it by others.
The main sources of information are:
Reasons
According to Wheeler's appendix, the fork occurred just after
February 1994, and the motivations were procedural/organisational:
"the Linux kernel developers thought that the FSF’s
development process for the C library was too slow and not
responding to their needs". This ties in with Bruce
Perens' comment in 2000 that the Linux libc fork "went on
for years while Linux stabilized" (from
article Forking:
it could even happen to you).
Moen's article says the reason was technical: "they decided
that FSF's library (then at version 1-point-something) could/should
best be adapted for the Linux kernel as a separately-maintained
project". Both reasons could have contributed.
During the fork
H. J. Lu is mentioned by a few people as being the maintainer or
main contributor to Linux libc.
Elliot Lee's article says that while the Linux kernel developers
were using their fork, glibc development stalled for a time. This
coincides with the time that FSF spent working on version 2.0,
during which there were no official releases for two years. The
development progress during this time is noted in the
twice-annual GNU's
bulletins that FSF published throughout the 90s.
From the
NEWS files, it seems Cygnus Solutions hired Ulrich Drepper to
work on it from late 1995
onwards since the
January 1996 GNU's bulletin mentions that Drepper has
contributed a lot "in the last few months".
Glibc 2.0
It looks like glibc 2.0 was released in January or February 1997
(from the dates in the GNU
ftp site,
from the
January 1997 GNU's bulletin, and from some mailing list
discussion archives).
By all accounts, glibc-2.0 surpassed Linux libc on features,
standards, and code cleanliness. Elliot Lee's article goes into
most detail on this, citing features such as POSIX compliance,
internationalisation support, multithreaded support, IPv6, and
64-bit data access, and library version migration support.
There is an 1998 interview with H.J. Lu about libc5
and glibc.
The interview mostly focuses on technical differences and the transition.
H.J. is quite positive about glibc 2.0.
Ending
Bruce Perens' one line comment about the aftermath is that the
projects "re-merged", however, while the communities and
contributors may have merged, according to Stallman, little or no
code did. According to Stallman, the Linux libc had insufficient
records of authorship or copyright ownership for the code they
distributed (something the GNU project has always been very strict
about), and the Linux libc maintainers were unwilling to sort this
out.
In 1997 through 1998 nearly
all GNU/Linux
systems switched from libc back to glibc. Red Hat migrated in
December 1997, and Debian was planning their migration at that time
too, according to Lee. And so ended a story that is now rarely
mentioned.
Revisions: #1 Added a 1998 interview with H.J. Lu to the Glibc 2.0 section.
--
Ciarán O'Riordan,
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