[Python-Dev] LC_NUMERIC and C libraries

[Martin v. Löwis]

Christian Reis <kiko@async.com.br> writes:

> > a) it is unlikely that patches are accepted from anybody but
> >    the author of the code, and
> > b) it is unlikely that patches are implemented that provide huge
> >    chunks of the C library.
> 
> I'm afraid I didn't quite understand these two points:
> 
> a) Do you mean to say that the patch should be sent *to* the original
> author of the locale code? The original author of the code that *calls*
> atof/strtod?

No. I said that the original author should send us the patches; we
will only accept them from that author.

> If the latter I can try and get Alex Larsson to submit the code. Is
> written permission from the glib team, relicensing the code, not
> acceptable enough, though?

We would have to discuss this in the PSF. In general, we want the PSF
to be owner of all contributed code, see

http://www.python.org/psf/psf-contributor-agreement.html

We had bad experience with contributions by non-authors in the past,
and had to back out changes that we later found we had no right to
distribute.

> b) I'm unsure as to how we should proceed without offering alternative
> versions of strtod/formatd (which is what the pystrtod.c file includes);
> AFAICS, the current situation is *caused* by the libc versions not being
> LC_NUMERIC-safe. Do you see an alternative?

It might well be unimplementable. However, if you can find
platform-specific routines that you can wrap with a small wrapper,
falling back to strtod if such routines are not available, that might
be a way out. For example, on glibc, you could use __strtod_l.

Regards,
Martin