[Pkg-zsh-devel] Bug#769448: Bug#769450: zsh-static unsets $USERNAME

[Vincent Lefevre]

Hi,

On 2014-11-14 09:47:48 +0100, Axel Beckert wrote:
> In https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=354631#27 Clint
> writes:
> 
>   [...] the problem is that user/group lookups are disabled in the
>   -static build because glibc's NSS ABI is unstable and static
>   binaries still need to load NSS modules dynamically.

Isn't it possible to get this NSS code in the static binary instead
of having to load modules dynamically?

>   If we re-enable lookups, then zsh-static will segfault on any major
>   libc upgrade. I don't know what the best solution here is.
> 
> That IMHO explains well why a statically complied binary still needs
> dynamically linked libraries -- which may change their ABI _with_ an
> SONAME bump, so no bug in libc6,

So, if the libc6 version is incorrect, the module cannot be found
because of the SONAME bump. So, one should get a clean error with
a meaningful error message instead of a segfault in such a case.

> but zsh-static should likely depend on
> 
>   libc6 (>= $current_glibc_upstream_version), libc6 (<< $next_glibc_upstream_version)
> 
> if we remove "STATICFLAGS += --disable-dynamic-nss" from debian/rules.

IMHO there are two better solutions, but this would need some change
in the glibc packaging:

1. The dynamic modules are provided by a separate package, whose name
depends on the ABI (which is typically done for usual libraries, where
different versions are co-installable). The advantage is that libc6
and zsh-static upgrades could be done independently for the user (very
useful in case of blocking bugs).

2. If this is not possible, glibc could provide a virtual package
associated with the ABI, so that zsh-static could directly depend
on the ABI itself.

> So I'm no more sure if removing that line is really a good idea.
> 
> OTOH: We are thinking about dropping the zsh-static package after
> Jessie anyways. Popcon's "vote" is around 25 and such issues don't
> seem to have bothered people too much since 2006.
> 
> So if anyone wants to keep zsh-static and is reading this, please
> _tell_ us!

Removing zsh-static would be better than keeping a buggy one,
in particular one that isn't really static.

-- 
Vincent Lefèvre <vincent at vinc17.net> - Web: <https://www.vinc17.net/>
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