klibc - another libc?

Michael Tokarev
2006-06-07T08:51:39Z

After several mentions of klibc recently, I want to ask a question.

I understand all the kernel-mode cleanups -- moving initialization
from kernel to user space is a very good thing.

But the question really is: why yet another libc? We already have
dietlibc, uclibc, glibc, now klibc... With modern kernel, initramfs
will very probably contain quite some programs linked with glibc
(modprobe/insmod, mdadm/lvm, etc; I highly suggest putting some
minimal text editor like nvi there too, for rescue purposes) --
so why not have an option to use whatever libc is available on
the host platform?

In the other words, kinit/ipconfig/nfsmount/etc stuff is ok,
no questions. But the libc itself -- what for?

And another related question: why not dietlibc which is already
here, for quite long time?

Thanks.

/mjt