From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Msuck: nntp://news.gmane.org/gmane.linux.lib.musl.general/1553 Path: news.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: "Arvid E. Picciani" Newsgroups: gmane.linux.lib.musl.general Subject: Re: Design for extensible =?UTF-8?Q?passwd=5B/shadow=3F=5D?= =?UTF-8?Q?=20db=20support?= Date: Mon, 13 Aug 2012 11:41:47 +0200 Message-ID: References: <20120812053802.GA10971@brightrain.aerifal.cx> <20120812205643.GT27715@brightrain.aerifal.cx> Reply-To: musl@lists.openwall.com NNTP-Posting-Host: plane.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Trace: dough.gmane.org 1344850925 969 80.91.229.3 (13 Aug 2012 09:42:05 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@dough.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Mon, 13 Aug 2012 09:42:05 +0000 (UTC) To: Original-X-From: musl-return-1554-gllmg-musl=m.gmane.org@lists.openwall.com Mon Aug 13 11:42:06 2012 Return-path: Envelope-to: gllmg-musl@plane.gmane.org Original-Received: from mother.openwall.net ([195.42.179.200]) by plane.gmane.org with smtp (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1T0r9x-0001N7-AT for gllmg-musl@plane.gmane.org; Mon, 13 Aug 2012 11:42:05 +0200 Original-Received: (qmail 23997 invoked by uid 550); 13 Aug 2012 09:42:03 -0000 Mailing-List: contact musl-help@lists.openwall.com; run by ezmlm Precedence: bulk List-Post: List-Help: List-Unsubscribe: List-Subscribe: Original-Received: (qmail 23986 invoked from network); 13 Aug 2012 09:42:03 -0000 In-Reply-To: <20120812205643.GT27715@brightrain.aerifal.cx> X-Sender: aep@exys.org User-Agent: Roundcube Webmail/0.5.4 Xref: news.gmane.org gmane.linux.lib.musl.general:1553 Archived-At: On Sun, 12 Aug 2012 16:56:43 -0400, Rich Felker wrote: > I don't follow. What alternative are your proposing? push user lookup up the stack and force ancient code to link in the high level lib. imo, getpwent and the link don't belong into libc. They're only there because ancient unix systems had a lot of tools that shared that functionality and an extra lib would seem bloat for the little functionality they offered (basicly, it's a shared /etc/passwd parser, not a user lookup per se). Then glibc wanted more then that, out of a real need, and crammed it into libc as well, because of the inability to break compatibility. Now, musl _can_ break compatibility with GNU/Linux. Especially if it's just "link against another lib". Then you can go to full lengths and rebuild the whole idea of user lookup, auth, etc. Another grief i have with PAM is that it is orthogonal to libc. For a dynamic loaded system, if you design the interface carefully, this means you can exchange the auth/user/whatever lib with something else at the packaging level. For a static linked system, it makes no difference at all. -- Arvid E. Picciani