OpenEmbedded and musl-libc

OpenEmbedded and musl-libc

[Paul Barker]

Hi all,

musl-libc hit version 1.0.0 yesterday and is starting to look good to
me. It's basically a really small but very functional libc that would
suit embedded environments very well as an alternative to
eglibc/uclibc. I'm personally very interested in using it in my
projects and I also think it could fit in well with the aims of
poky-tiny.

http://www.etalabs.net/compare_libcs.html gives some pretty useful info.

I'm basically emailing to see if anyone else is interested in this or
if anyone has looked at using it before in OpenEmbedded as a google
for previous discussions didn't turn anything up.

I'm currently very busy between various projects so I don't have time
to hack together a musl-libc recipe myself but I should have time to
help test it.

Thanks,

-- 
Paul Barker

Email: paul@paulbarker.me.uk
http://www.paulbarker.me.uk

Re: [OE-core] OpenEmbedded and musl-libc

[Burton, Ross]

On 21 March 2014 12:34, Paul Barker <paul@paulbarker.me.uk> wrote:
> I'm currently very busy between various projects so I don't have time
> to hack together a musl-libc recipe myself but I should have time to
> help test it.

I saw that yesterday too and thought it could be interesting for
Yocto.  I'm curious as to why it's better than uclibc though
(genuinely curious, I know little about uclibc beyond "it's smaller").

Ross

Re: OpenEmbedded and musl-libc

[Burton, Ross]

On 21 March 2014 12:34, Paul Barker <paul@paulbarker.me.uk> wrote:
> I'm currently very busy between various projects so I don't have time
> to hack together a musl-libc recipe myself but I should have time to
> help test it.

I saw that yesterday too and thought it could be interesting for
Yocto.  I'm curious as to why it's better than uclibc though
(genuinely curious, I know little about uclibc beyond "it's smaller").

Ross

Re: [OE-core] OpenEmbedded and musl-libc

[Seth Bollinger]

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>
>
> I saw that yesterday too and thought it could be interesting for
> Yocto.  I'm curious as to why it's better than uclibc though
> (genuinely curious, I know little about uclibc beyond "it's smaller").
>

It been a while since I've reviewed uclibc, but doesn't it break a lot of
software with its vfork only paradigm?

Seth

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Re: [yocto] OpenEmbedded and musl-libc

[Seth Bollinger]

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>
>
> I saw that yesterday too and thought it could be interesting for
> Yocto.  I'm curious as to why it's better than uclibc though
> (genuinely curious, I know little about uclibc beyond "it's smaller").
>

It been a while since I've reviewed uclibc, but doesn't it break a lot of
software with its vfork only paradigm?

Seth

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Re: OpenEmbedded and musl-libc

[Kevyn-Alexandre Paré]

I will be interested for sure!

I have added it to bugzilla as an enhancement. They were suggesting
new feature for 1.7 in the last meeting and suggesting to add them in
bugzilla as new feature.

Please review if I filed the bug properly
https://bugzilla.yoctoproject.org/show_bug.cgi?id=6024

-KA

On Fri, Mar 21, 2014 at 8:34 AM, Paul Barker <paul@paulbarker.me.uk> wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> musl-libc hit version 1.0.0 yesterday and is starting to look good to
> me. It's basically a really small but very functional libc that would
> suit embedded environments very well as an alternative to
> eglibc/uclibc. I'm personally very interested in using it in my
> projects and I also think it could fit in well with the aims of
> poky-tiny.
>
> http://www.etalabs.net/compare_libcs.html gives some pretty useful info.
>
> I'm basically emailing to see if anyone else is interested in this or
> if anyone has looked at using it before in OpenEmbedded as a google
> for previous discussions didn't turn anything up.
>
> I'm currently very busy between various projects so I don't have time
> to hack together a musl-libc recipe myself but I should have time to
> help test it.
>
> Thanks,
>
> --
> Paul Barker
>
> Email: paul@paulbarker.me.uk
> http://www.paulbarker.me.uk
> --
> _______________________________________________
> yocto mailing list
> yocto@yoctoproject.org
> https://lists.yoctoproject.org/listinfo/yocto

Re: [OE-core] OpenEmbedded and musl-libc

[Paul Barker]

On 21 March 2014 13:10, Burton, Ross <ross.burton@intel.com> wrote:
> On 21 March 2014 12:34, Paul Barker <paul@paulbarker.me.uk> wrote:
>> I'm currently very busy between various projects so I don't have time
>> to hack together a musl-libc recipe myself but I should have time to
>> help test it.
>
> I saw that yesterday too and thought it could be interesting for
> Yocto.  I'm curious as to why it's better than uclibc though
> (genuinely curious, I know little about uclibc beyond "it's smaller").
>
> Ross

Looking at what they say: Better standards compliance, different
license, better for static linking, full UTF-8 support, strong
fail-safe guarantees.

I am taking that at face value as I haven't really done my own
comparison of glibc/uclibc/musl. I've been following the news of musl
development for a while though and I like the direction they're
heading in.

Thanks,

-- 
Paul Barker

Email: paul@paulbarker.me.uk
http://www.paulbarker.me.uk

Re: OpenEmbedded and musl-libc

[Paul Barker]

On 21 March 2014 13:10, Burton, Ross <ross.burton@intel.com> wrote:
> On 21 March 2014 12:34, Paul Barker <paul@paulbarker.me.uk> wrote:
>> I'm currently very busy between various projects so I don't have time
>> to hack together a musl-libc recipe myself but I should have time to
>> help test it.
>
> I saw that yesterday too and thought it could be interesting for
> Yocto.  I'm curious as to why it's better than uclibc though
> (genuinely curious, I know little about uclibc beyond "it's smaller").
>
> Ross

Looking at what they say: Better standards compliance, different
license, better for static linking, full UTF-8 support, strong
fail-safe guarantees.

I am taking that at face value as I haven't really done my own
comparison of glibc/uclibc/musl. I've been following the news of musl
development for a while though and I like the direction they're
heading in.

Thanks,

-- 
Paul Barker

Email: paul@paulbarker.me.uk
http://www.paulbarker.me.uk

Re: OpenEmbedded and musl-libc

[Kevyn-Alexandre Paré]

little start,

I have started something see my bugzilla update:

Stuck at:
ERROR: QA Issue: musl-libc: Files/directories were installed but not shipped
  /usr/lib/musl-gcc.specs

Any suggestions?

-KA

On Fri, Mar 21, 2014 at 9:42 AM, Kevyn-Alexandre Paré
<kapare@rogue-research.com> wrote:
> I will be interested for sure!
>
> I have added it to bugzilla as an enhancement. They were suggesting
> new feature for 1.7 in the last meeting and suggesting to add them in
> bugzilla as new feature.
>
> Please review if I filed the bug properly
> https://bugzilla.yoctoproject.org/show_bug.cgi?id=6024
>
> -KA
>
> On Fri, Mar 21, 2014 at 8:34 AM, Paul Barker <paul@paulbarker.me.uk> wrote:
>> Hi all,
>>
>> musl-libc hit version 1.0.0 yesterday and is starting to look good to
>> me. It's basically a really small but very functional libc that would
>> suit embedded environments very well as an alternative to
>> eglibc/uclibc. I'm personally very interested in using it in my
>> projects and I also think it could fit in well with the aims of
>> poky-tiny.
>>
>> http://www.etalabs.net/compare_libcs.html gives some pretty useful info.
>>
>> I'm basically emailing to see if anyone else is interested in this or
>> if anyone has looked at using it before in OpenEmbedded as a google
>> for previous discussions didn't turn anything up.
>>
>> I'm currently very busy between various projects so I don't have time
>> to hack together a musl-libc recipe myself but I should have time to
>> help test it.
>>
>> Thanks,
>>
>> --
>> Paul Barker
>>
>> Email: paul@paulbarker.me.uk
>> http://www.paulbarker.me.uk
>> --
>> _______________________________________________
>> yocto mailing list
>> yocto@yoctoproject.org
>> https://lists.yoctoproject.org/listinfo/yocto

Re: [OE-core] OpenEmbedded and musl-libc

[Khem Raj]

On Fri, Mar 21, 2014 at 5:34 AM, Paul Barker <paul@paulbarker.me.uk> wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> musl-libc hit version 1.0.0 yesterday and is starting to look good to
> me. It's basically a really small but very functional libc that would
> suit embedded environments very well as an alternative to
> eglibc/uclibc. I'm personally very interested in using it in my
> projects and I also think it could fit in well with the aims of
> poky-tiny.
>
> http://www.etalabs.net/compare_libcs.html gives some pretty useful info.
>
> I'm basically emailing to see if anyone else is interested in this or
> if anyone has looked at using it before in OpenEmbedded as a google
> for previous discussions didn't turn anything up.
>
> I'm currently very busy between various projects so I don't have time
> to hack together a musl-libc recipe myself but I should have time to
> help test it.

it has been under my radar for a while. I have actually locally made
toolchains with
clang+musl and it seems to be coming along. its licensed differently thats
the biggest attraction for folks who do static linking. Otherwise it still
doesnt yet support variety of architectures that other libcs support. given
now we have kconfig for eglibc too may be it fills in the nommu gap much
like uclibc does today. I have some plans for 1.7 for adding it to OE
may be in a layer
of its own first and then migrate it to OE-core

>
> Thanks,
>
> --
> Paul Barker
>
> Email: paul@paulbarker.me.uk
> http://www.paulbarker.me.uk
> --
> _______________________________________________
> Openembedded-core mailing list
> Openembedded-core@lists.openembedded.org
> http://lists.openembedded.org/mailman/listinfo/openembedded-core

Re: OpenEmbedded and musl-libc

[Khem Raj]

On Fri, Mar 21, 2014 at 5:34 AM, Paul Barker <paul@paulbarker.me.uk> wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> musl-libc hit version 1.0.0 yesterday and is starting to look good to
> me. It's basically a really small but very functional libc that would
> suit embedded environments very well as an alternative to
> eglibc/uclibc. I'm personally very interested in using it in my
> projects and I also think it could fit in well with the aims of
> poky-tiny.
>
> http://www.etalabs.net/compare_libcs.html gives some pretty useful info.
>
> I'm basically emailing to see if anyone else is interested in this or
> if anyone has looked at using it before in OpenEmbedded as a google
> for previous discussions didn't turn anything up.
>
> I'm currently very busy between various projects so I don't have time
> to hack together a musl-libc recipe myself but I should have time to
> help test it.

it has been under my radar for a while. I have actually locally made
toolchains with
clang+musl and it seems to be coming along. its licensed differently thats
the biggest attraction for folks who do static linking. Otherwise it still
doesnt yet support variety of architectures that other libcs support. given
now we have kconfig for eglibc too may be it fills in the nommu gap much
like uclibc does today. I have some plans for 1.7 for adding it to OE
may be in a layer
of its own first and then migrate it to OE-core

>
> Thanks,
>
> --
> Paul Barker
>
> Email: paul@paulbarker.me.uk
> http://www.paulbarker.me.uk
> --
> _______________________________________________
> Openembedded-core mailing list
> Openembedded-core@lists.openembedded.org
> http://lists.openembedded.org/mailman/listinfo/openembedded-core

Re: [OE-core] OpenEmbedded and musl-libc

[Paul Barker]

On 21 March 2014 18:22, Khem Raj <raj.khem@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Fri, Mar 21, 2014 at 5:34 AM, Paul Barker <paul@paulbarker.me.uk> wrote:
>> Hi all,
>>
>> musl-libc hit version 1.0.0 yesterday and is starting to look good to
>> me. It's basically a really small but very functional libc that would
>> suit embedded environments very well as an alternative to
>> eglibc/uclibc. I'm personally very interested in using it in my
>> projects and I also think it could fit in well with the aims of
>> poky-tiny.
>>
>> http://www.etalabs.net/compare_libcs.html gives some pretty useful info.
>>
>> I'm basically emailing to see if anyone else is interested in this or
>> if anyone has looked at using it before in OpenEmbedded as a google
>> for previous discussions didn't turn anything up.
>>
>> I'm currently very busy between various projects so I don't have time
>> to hack together a musl-libc recipe myself but I should have time to
>> help test it.
>
> it has been under my radar for a while. I have actually locally made
> toolchains with
> clang+musl and it seems to be coming along. its licensed differently thats
> the biggest attraction for folks who do static linking. Otherwise it still
> doesnt yet support variety of architectures that other libcs support. given
> now we have kconfig for eglibc too may be it fills in the nommu gap much
> like uclibc does today. I have some plans for 1.7 for adding it to OE
> may be in a layer
> of its own first and then migrate it to OE-core
>

Yea, that's the sort of approach I was expecting. Getting musl to
build is the easy bit, making it usable as the system libc for an
entire image is the difficult bit. I think at least initially we'd
need a few bbappends in a meta-musl layer to fix packages which don't
compile out-of-the-box with musl.

I don't think musl fills the nommu gap though - from the comparison
page I linked to it says musl doesn't support mmu-less
microcontrollers.

-- 
Paul Barker

Email: paul@paulbarker.me.uk
http://www.paulbarker.me.uk

Re: OpenEmbedded and musl-libc

[Paul Barker]

On 21 March 2014 18:22, Khem Raj <raj.khem@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Fri, Mar 21, 2014 at 5:34 AM, Paul Barker <paul@paulbarker.me.uk> wrote:
>> Hi all,
>>
>> musl-libc hit version 1.0.0 yesterday and is starting to look good to
>> me. It's basically a really small but very functional libc that would
>> suit embedded environments very well as an alternative to
>> eglibc/uclibc. I'm personally very interested in using it in my
>> projects and I also think it could fit in well with the aims of
>> poky-tiny.
>>
>> http://www.etalabs.net/compare_libcs.html gives some pretty useful info.
>>
>> I'm basically emailing to see if anyone else is interested in this or
>> if anyone has looked at using it before in OpenEmbedded as a google
>> for previous discussions didn't turn anything up.
>>
>> I'm currently very busy between various projects so I don't have time
>> to hack together a musl-libc recipe myself but I should have time to
>> help test it.
>
> it has been under my radar for a while. I have actually locally made
> toolchains with
> clang+musl and it seems to be coming along. its licensed differently thats
> the biggest attraction for folks who do static linking. Otherwise it still
> doesnt yet support variety of architectures that other libcs support. given
> now we have kconfig for eglibc too may be it fills in the nommu gap much
> like uclibc does today. I have some plans for 1.7 for adding it to OE
> may be in a layer
> of its own first and then migrate it to OE-core
>

Yea, that's the sort of approach I was expecting. Getting musl to
build is the easy bit, making it usable as the system libc for an
entire image is the difficult bit. I think at least initially we'd
need a few bbappends in a meta-musl layer to fix packages which don't
compile out-of-the-box with musl.

I don't think musl fills the nommu gap though - from the comparison
page I linked to it says musl doesn't support mmu-less
microcontrollers.

-- 
Paul Barker

Email: paul@paulbarker.me.uk
http://www.paulbarker.me.uk

Re: [OE-core] OpenEmbedded and musl-libc

[Thomas Petazzoni]

Dear Seth Bollinger,

On Fri, 21 Mar 2014 08:26:08 -0500, Seth Bollinger wrote:

> > I saw that yesterday too and thought it could be interesting for
> > Yocto.  I'm curious as to why it's better than uclibc though
> > (genuinely curious, I know little about uclibc beyond "it's smaller").
> 
> It been a while since I've reviewed uclibc, but doesn't it break a lot of
> software with its vfork only paradigm?

I'm not sure where you have seen that uClibc has vfork() only paradigm,
but it's not correct. uClibc has a proper fork() implementation on all
MMU-equipped CPU architectures that uClibc support. Only the non-MMU
architectures are limited to vfork(). The originality of uClibc here is
probably precisely the fact that it supports non-MMU architectures,
which many other C libraries do not.

Thomas
-- 
Thomas Petazzoni, CTO, Free Electrons
Embedded Linux, Kernel and Android engineering
http://free-electrons.com

Re: [OE-core] OpenEmbedded and musl-libc

[Thomas Petazzoni]

Dear Paul Barker,

On Fri, 21 Mar 2014 14:37:16 +0000, Paul Barker wrote:
> On 21 March 2014 13:10, Burton, Ross <ross.burton@intel.com> wrote:
> > On 21 March 2014 12:34, Paul Barker <paul@paulbarker.me.uk> wrote:
> >> I'm currently very busy between various projects so I don't have time
> >> to hack together a musl-libc recipe myself but I should have time to
> >> help test it.
> >
> > I saw that yesterday too and thought it could be interesting for
> > Yocto.  I'm curious as to why it's better than uclibc though
> > (genuinely curious, I know little about uclibc beyond "it's smaller").
> >
> > Ross
> 
> Looking at what they say: Better standards compliance, different
> license, better for static linking, full UTF-8 support, strong
> fail-safe guarantees.

I would also add that musl is less configurable than uClibc. This might
be seen as a drawback (you have less possibilities of fine-tuning the
configuration) but also has a lot of advantages (it's easier for the
maintainers to test the code base, it's easier to know what feature set
musl provides, while with uClibc, each configuration provides a
different feature set, which can be a nightmare for build systems).

Another important thing is that the musl community is much more active
than the uClibc one. uClibc hasn't seen a stable release since a looong
time, and despite several calls on the mailing list since several months
to do a release, nothing is happening.

Thomas
-- 
Thomas Petazzoni, CTO, Free Electrons
Embedded Linux, Kernel and Android engineering
http://free-electrons.com

Re: [OE-core] OpenEmbedded and musl-libc

[Thomas Petazzoni]

Dear Khem Raj,

On Fri, 21 Mar 2014 11:22:24 -0700, Khem Raj wrote:

> it has been under my radar for a while. I have actually locally made
> toolchains with
> clang+musl and it seems to be coming along. its licensed differently thats
> the biggest attraction for folks who do static linking. Otherwise it still
> doesnt yet support variety of architectures that other libcs support. given
> now we have kconfig for eglibc too may be it fills in the nommu gap much
> like uclibc does today.

The non-MMU gap? Last time I looked, musl didn't had support for any
non-MMU architecture. See also
http://lists.uclibc.org/pipermail/uclibc/2014-February/048258.html:

"""
> Do you intend to have support for non-MMU architectures in musl?

At present there isn't a plan to, but we're not particularly opposed
to it either. The big questions are how invasive it would be and
whether we can provide full functionality in any reasonable way. The
answers to those questions wouldn't translate directly to a yes or no
but would be an important part of considerations. It would probably
help to have someone familiar with the technical aspects of supporting
non-MMU archs discuss it with us on our mailing list or IRC channel.

Rich
"""

Thomas
-- 
Thomas Petazzoni, CTO, Free Electrons
Embedded Linux, Kernel and Android engineering
http://free-electrons.com

Re: [OE-core] OpenEmbedded and musl-libc

[Khem Raj]

On Wed, Mar 26, 2014 at 9:48 AM, Thomas Petazzoni
<thomas.petazzoni@free-electrons.com> wrote:
> Dear Khem Raj,
>
> On Fri, 21 Mar 2014 11:22:24 -0700, Khem Raj wrote:
>
>> it has been under my radar for a while. I have actually locally made
>> toolchains with
>> clang+musl and it seems to be coming along. its licensed differently thats
>> the biggest attraction for folks who do static linking. Otherwise it still
>> doesnt yet support variety of architectures that other libcs support. given
>> now we have kconfig for eglibc too may be it fills in the nommu gap much
>> like uclibc does today.
>
> The non-MMU gap? Last time I looked, musl didn't had support for any
> non-MMU architecture.

yes it does not. I meant to state the reverse that mmu-less systems is
where uclibc will have edge left.

Re: [yocto] OpenEmbedded and musl-libc

[Khem Raj]

On Wed, Mar 26, 2014 at 9:48 AM, Thomas Petazzoni
<thomas.petazzoni@free-electrons.com> wrote:
> Dear Khem Raj,
>
> On Fri, 21 Mar 2014 11:22:24 -0700, Khem Raj wrote:
>
>> it has been under my radar for a while. I have actually locally made
>> toolchains with
>> clang+musl and it seems to be coming along. its licensed differently thats
>> the biggest attraction for folks who do static linking. Otherwise it still
>> doesnt yet support variety of architectures that other libcs support. given
>> now we have kconfig for eglibc too may be it fills in the nommu gap much
>> like uclibc does today.
>
> The non-MMU gap? Last time I looked, musl didn't had support for any
> non-MMU architecture.

yes it does not. I meant to state the reverse that mmu-less systems is
where uclibc will have edge left.