Last week, the GNU C Library version 2.30 was made available to all users. The major highlights of this release include new POSIX (Portable Operating System Interface)-proposed functions, support for Unicode 12.1.0, support to –preload argument to preload shared objects, addition of new functions such as getdents64, gettid, and tgkill to Linux and more.
The GNU C Library is used in the GNU systems, GNU/Linux systems as well as on other systems that use Linux as the kernel. It is a portable and high performance C library.
Major new features in GNU C Library version 2.30
- New POSIX-proposed pthread_cond_clockwait, pthread_mutex_clocklock, pthread_rwlock_clockrdlock, pthread_rwlock_clockwrlock and sem_clockwait functions have been introduced in GNU C Library version 2.30. All the functions allow waiting against CLOCK_MONOTONIC and CLOCK_REALTIME.
- The GNU C Library version 2.30 has an added support of Unicode 12.1.0. Character encoding, character type info, and transliteration tables have also been updated to Unicode 12.1.0.
- The dynamic linker will now accept the –preload argument to preload shared objects along with the LD_PRELOAD environment variable.
- The getdents64, gettid, and tgkill functions have been added on Linux.
- Memory allocation functions malloc, calloc, realloc, reallocarray, valloc, pvalloc, memalign, and posix_memalign will need object size smaller than PTRDIFF_MAX. This will help the memory allocation functions to avoid potential undefined behavior with pointer subtraction within the allocated object, which caused ptrdiff_t type overflow.
Deprecated features influencing compatibility
- Functions like clock_gettime, clock_getres, clock_settime, clock_getcpuclockid, clock_nanosleep have been removed from the librt library for new applications.
- The outdated XSI STREAMS header files <stropts.h> and <sys/stropts.h> and the RES_INSECURE1 and RES_INSECURE2 option flags for the DNS stub have been abolished.
- The support for “inet6” option in /etc/resolv.conf and the RES_USE_INET6 resolver flag have been eliminated.
- The Linux-specific <sys/sysctl.h> header and the sysctl function have been removed from the GNU C Library version 2.30 and also will not be present in the future versions of glibc. The getentropy function can be used for obtaining random bits.
Bug Fixes in GNU C Library version 2.30
- gettid() to have a wrapper in libc
- nftw() does not return dangling symlink’s inode in libc
- mtrace hangs when MALLOC_TRACE is defined in malloc
- memusagestat is built using system C library in malloc
- libpthread IFUNC resolver for vfork can lead to crash in nptl
These are select few updates. For more information, you may go through the libc sourceware page.
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