Re: Multi-archive Contexts: Some PCP Tools Lost in Time

[fche@xxxxxxxxxx (Frank Ch. Eigler)]

kenj wrote:

> [...]
> I think all of
> - pmlogdump
> - pmlogcheck
> - pmlogrewrite
> should / could be constrained to operate on a single archive at a time.
> [...]

(Yeah, maybe.)

> Would that make life easier?

Not sure; I'll defer to brolley for the more definitive word.  But
from first principles, one problem here is that the libpcp ABI
includes -some- data structure definitions, like _pmContext and its
connected bits.  Old binaries that traverse those data structures were
compiled against a previous <impl.h>, and could crash or whatever if
run against libpcp.so that has the changes -- whether or not they
happen to be operating on a multi-archive.

It sounds likely that the apps that rely on impl.h internals (why is
that file installed anyway?) may be the same ones that that we can
detect & disable with a symbol-versioning hack such as a dummy 
__pmHandleToPtr() { return 0; } function.


- FChE