On Jul 14,  4:42pm, jconklin@netcom.com (J.T. Conklin) wrote:
-- Subject: Re: getpw*() changes to support YP netgroups

| I don't think that changing the library major version isn't going to
| help anything.  It probably be worse -- then all existing executables
| will break, instead of just statically linked and pre-libc.12.X
| executables.

I agree, in my opinion it is better to leave the library revision the same.

| Changing the format of the passwd database files is not something to
| be taken lightly.  Quite a few, perhaps most, of the programs I use
| every day use getpwnam(), etc. and will have to be re-compiled.
| 
| I think that the following questions have to be answered:
| 
| 	1. Do the advantages of this change outweigh the
| 	   disadvantages?  In particular, consider comercial software
| 	   that does not come with source.

Well, commercial software that is dynamically linked, will continue to
work. Statically linked software will break. There is not much that can
be done. If we want netgroups to work, we have to update the format.

| 	2. what has been done so that we won't be faced with this same
| 	   issue 6 months or one year from now?

The database format is now:

    line-number followed by the actual passwd line

This is more generic than it used to be. The line number addition is
necessary because YP entries have to be processed in the order they are
encountered in the file.

christos