[arch-dev-public] SBCL, kernel, and GCC 4.30

[K. Piche]

While trying to build the latest SBCL I came across an interesting
problem.  The build halts midway and clocks the CPU at 100%.

A quick search shows that GCC 4.3.0 changed the ABI slightly to conform
to the formal standard as opposed to the defacto standard.  GCC stopped
clearing or setting the DF before function calls which is out of step
with the kernel which expects it set/cleared.  Apparently this mostly
affects signal handlers called by the kernel.  This causes problems with
the signal functions in our glibc because it was compiled with GCC
4.3.0.  I installed glibc 2.7-7 and sbcl builds fine now.

A better explanation of the problem can be found at
http://lwn.net/Articles/272048/ and at the very bottem there is a link
to a Debian bug.

The problem is fixed in kernel 2.6.25 and (sigh) there is a patch
available for 2.6.24.

k


-- 
K. Piche <kpiche at rogers.com>