glibc vs musl - what is the difference for daily usage ?

glibc vs musl - what is the difference for daily usage ?

[Frankie Wild]

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There is quite a lot of steer around musl those days. I have tried musl 
compiled mate based image of Void on virtual machine, but since Void is so 
fast I couldn't notice any difference between glibc images I have tried in 
the past. 

I have read stuff about smaller size, faster performance, but in reality it 
looks negligible. Is there more to it in the long run ? And what are the 
cons ?

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Re: glibc vs musl - what is the difference for daily usage ?

[Stefan Mühlinghaus]

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I would be interested in that as well. Is there any *tangible* benefit in 
using the musl libc except having the warm fuzzies from using the leaner 
technology? :)
I hesitate to switch to musl for fear of running into incompatibilities, 
but that could just be my superstitious self.

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Re: glibc vs musl - what is the difference for daily usage ?

[Chris Brannon]

Stefan Mühlinghaus <master...@googlemail.com> writes:

> I would be interested in that as well. Is there any tangible benefit
> in using the musl libc except having the warm fuzzies from using the
> leaner technology? :)
> I hesitate to switch to musl for fear of running into
> incompatibilities, but that could just be my superstitious self.

Well, I'm probably not the best advocate, but here goes.
The reason I took an interest in musl is that it is very friendly to
static linking, and on occasion, I really want to be able to statically
link things!  The code is also quite readable.
I run Void with musl on my Raspberry Pi, and yes, the "warm fuzzies from
using the leaner technology" are nice.
Finally, part of me just really dislikes monoculture, and having an
alternative libc appeals to that sensibility.
I'm sure someone can come up with better reasons.
That being said, I doubt most users care much about libc
implementations.

If you're running proprietary binaries of some sort, they're probably
linked against glibc, so they won't run out of the box on a system where
musl is the standard library.  That isn't an issue for me on my
Raspberry Pi.  There are still some open source packages that won't
build with it.  The released versions of emacs are a good example.  If
you want to build emacs against musl, you have to use sources from git
and apply patches that have been submitted to Alpine.

Hope this helps,
-- Chris

Re: glibc vs musl - what is the difference for daily usage ?

[Christian Neukirchen]

Stefan Mühlinghaus <master...@googlemail.com> writes:

> I would be interested in that as well. Is there any *tangible* benefit in 
> using the musl libc except having the warm fuzzies from using the leaner 
> technology? :)
> I hesitate to switch to musl for fear of running into incompatibilities, 
> but that could just be my superstitious self.

Just a few additions:

- MIT license, so you could build a GPL-free userland with it.
- Good support for static linking.
- Huge focus on correctness (which means in practice that sloppily
  written software can break...).
- Good UTF-8 support.
- Support for new and experimental architectures.

Also see http://www.etalabs.net/compare_libcs.html

-- 
Christian Neukirchen  <chneuk...@gmail.com>  http://chneukirchen.org

Re: glibc vs musl - what is the difference for daily usage ?

[Frankie Wild]

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Thanks for the info Christian.

On Wednesday, June 17, 2015 at 12:58:50 PM UTC+3, Christian Neukirchen 
wrote:
>
> Stefan Mühlinghaus <mast...@googlemail.com <javascript:>> writes: 
>
> > I would be interested in that as well. Is there any *tangible* benefit 
> in 
> > using the musl libc except having the warm fuzzies from using the leaner 
> > technology? :) 
> > I hesitate to switch to musl for fear of running into incompatibilities, 
> > but that could just be my superstitious self. 
>
> Just a few additions: 
>
> - MIT license, so you could build a GPL-free userland with it. 
> - Good support for static linking. 
> - Huge focus on correctness (which means in practice that sloppily 
>   written software can break...). 
> - Good UTF-8 support. 
> - Support for new and experimental architectures. 
>
> Also see http://www.etalabs.net/compare_libcs.html 
>
> -- 
> Christian Neukirchen  <chne...@gmail.com <javascript:>>  
> http://chneukirchen.org 
>

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