Re: Upstreaming the glibc Hurd port

[Florian Weimer]

On 01/18/2018 01:45 PM, Samuel Thibault wrote:
> Florian Weimer, on jeu. 18 janv. 2018 13:39:51 +0100, wrote:
> > Is it just a matter of someone doing the work of upstreaming all the
> > existing patches?
>
> It's mostly that, yes.

Good to know, thanks.

The question is how we can do this incrementally (so that others can 
contribute), considering that is currently not exactly easy to set up 
and maintain a development environment to validate the changes.

> > If we cannot resolve this is in the coming months, I think we should
> > seriously consider a removal of the Hurd port, I'm afraid.
>
> Ok, then I can take the time to do it, but as usual it'll be at the
> expense of other Hurd activities, e.g. the obvious Meltdown/Spectre
> issues, etc.

Information leakage and microkernels are certainly an interesting 
research topic.  Message passing results in very different security 
considerations.

> Unless bug-hurd people actually help me with it.

I have repeatedly suggested that the FSF uses the toolchain fund to pay 
for this work.  I do not know there was under serious consideration (or 
if the suggestion even made it to the FSF).

Thanks,
Florian