[Pkg-xmpp-devel] gsasl on mips

[Simon Josefsson]

cascardo at minaslivre.org writes:

> Does this bug affect running code that Debian does distribute?

No.  Running 'make check' is only for QA, it doesn't affect any code.

> Anyway to work around it in the library code? Or is the buggy code
> produced in the test code?

Yes, it is the gsasl test code that provokes a bug in binutils.

> If it's the later, go ahead. If it's the former, perhaps we could look
> at the symbol that conflicts with libc symbol and change its name. Do
> you have any clue if the case is that of a conflicting symbol?

The name conflict is intentional: gnulib wants to override a buggy libc
function, and this is normal and should work fine.  Compare replacing
the libc 'strcpy' function with your own function with the same name,
that has always been a valid thing to do.  It is binutils that is buggy
on mips(el) and gives an error when this is attempted.  It affects
several packages in debian, e.g. coreutils, so we are not alone in this.
I've been waiting some time to see the binutils bug fixed (it is a RC
bug), but it doesn't seem that will happen soon.

Note further that this doesn't happen in the library part of GNU SASL at
all, it is only for building the 'gsasl' command line application.

So I believe it is OK to disable the self checks on mips(el), but we
should be aware of the problem and re-enable the self checks again as
soon as the binutils bug has been fixed.

/Simon