Fix Compatibility Problems Exposed by Testsuites

A number of software packages come with extensive testsuites. Some notable ones are glibc, gnulib, Perl, Python, GNU Coreutils, and glib. While these testsuites were written mostly to track regressions in the respective packages, some of the tests fail on the Hurd in general.

There is also the Open POSIX Testsuite which is more of a whole system interface testing suite.

Then, there is the File System Exerciser which we can use to test our file system servers for conformity.

While in some cases these might point to wrong usage of system interfaces, most of the time such failures are actually caused by shortcomings in Hurd's implementation of these interfaces. These shortcomings are often not obvious in normal use, but can be directly or indirectly responsible for all kinds of failures. The testsuites help in isolating such problems, so they can be tracked down and fixed.

This task thus consists in running some of the mentioned testsuites (and/or any other ones that come to mind), and looking into the causes of failures. The goal is to analyze all failures in one or more of the listed testsuites, to find out what shortcomings in the Hurd implementation cause them (if any), and to fix at least some of these shortcomings.

Note that this task somewhat overlaps with the Perl/Python task. Here the focus however is not on improving the support for any particular program, but on fixing general problems in the Hurd.

A complementary task is adding a proper unit testing framework to the GNU Hurd's code base, and related packages.

Implement Missing Interfaces in glibc for GNU Hurd

A related project is to implement missing interfaces for GNU Hurd (glibc wiki), primatily in glibc.

In glibc's Linux kernel port, most simple POSIX interfaces are in fact just forwarded to (implemented by) Linux kernel system calls. In contrast, in the GNU Hurd port, the POSIX (and other) interfaces are actually implemented in glibc on top of the Hurd RPC protocols. A few examples: getuid, open, rmdir, setresuid, socketpair.

When new interfaces are added to glibc (new editions of POSIX and similar standards, support for new editions of C/C++ standards, new GNU-specific extensions), generally ENOSYS stubs are added, which are then used as long as there is no real implementation, and often these real implementations are only done for the Linux kernel port, but not GNU Hurd. (This is because most of the contributors are primarily interested in using glibc on Linux-based systems.) Also, there is quite a backlog of missing implementations for GNU Hurd.

In coordination with the GNU Hurd developers, you'd work on implementing such missing interfaces.

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These are very flexible tasks: while less experienced students should be able to tackle at least a few of the easier problems, other issues will be challenging even for experienced hackers. No specific previous knowledge is required; only fairly decent C programming skills. While tracking down the various issues, the student will be digging into the inner workings of the Hurd, and thus gradually gaining the knowledge required for Hurd development in general.

Possible mentors: Samuel Thibault (youpi)

Exercise: Take a stab at one of the testsuite failures, or missing implementation, and write a minimal testcase exposing the underlying problem. Actually fixing it would be a bonus of course -- but as it's hard to predict which issues will be easy and which will be tricky, we will already be satisfied if the student makes a good effort. (We hope to see some discussion of the problems in this case though )