4.18 release plan

[alejandro-colomar]

@hallyn , @ikerexxe

How about having Gorgonzola on St. John's Day (2025-06-24)? :-)

We may (heh!) do the RC around the end of May.

[alejandro-colomar]

I'll try to put down a priority list of my patch sets:

• src/newusers.c: Fix off-by-one benign bug in array declaration #1266

  Trivial bug fix.

• Fields678 #1265

  Important bug fixes. Edit: confusing stuff; not a bug.

• lib/get_pid.c: pid_t is a signed integer #1264

  I've been blocking a PR because of this for a long time.

• Remove dead beef #1230

  Trivial removal of dead code.

• Add strprefix(), and use it instead of its pattern #1152

  Many patches depend on this one, which adds an interesting API which is widely useful.

• lib/sizeof.h: Make sure STRLEN() only accepts string literals #1260

  Trivial fortification.

• src/: Simplify, using strpbrk(3) #1167

  Trivial simplification.

• lib/string/strdup/: STRNDUPA(): Reimplement in terms of strndupa(3) #1189

  Trivial simplification.

• yacc(1) is a dead language; bury it deep in the ground #1217

  Get rid of yacc. Normally, I wouldn't be very confident of merging such a huge change quickly, but we've already merged a large part of that patch set, so the remaining part is smaller, and @ikerexxe has written tests for it, so we have some decent guarantees that I won't be breaking stuff, hopefully.

• lib/atoi/a2i/: Simplify these macros by calling a2i() #1137

  Trivial simplification.

• [x][v]aprintf(): Add APIs, and use them instead of [x][v]asprintf(3) #1168

  This is a very interesting API, which has been discussed for standardization in the C Committee, and there seems to be interest in such an API. It would be interesting to add it here as prior art. The Linux kernel and Plan9 use similar APIs.

  Here's the draft of a paper I'm preparing for the C Committee:
  https://www.alejandro-colomar.es/src/alx/alx/wg14/alx-0007.git/tree/alx-0007.txt

• [scp] Add strcaseprefix(), and use it instead of its pattern #1262

  Useful variant of strprefix().

• lib/: sget*ent(): Simplify by calling strdup(3) #1146

  Give some consistency to similar APIs.

• valid_field(): Improve readability #1208

  Adds a few APIs that we'll use in other places soon.

• strtolower(): Add API, and use it instead of its pattern #1211

  Move an API to under lib/string/, where it belongs.

• lib/fs/mkstemp/, src/: Move fmkomstemp() to separate files under lib/fs/mkstemp/, and split into mkomstemp() #1139

  Move an API to under lib/fs/, where it belongs.

• lib/, src/, tests/: Use the standard countof() instead of our NITEMS() #1259

  Use standardized APIs.

---

Edit: The following are not important for this release anymore. Let's freeze and cut the RC when the above have been merged.

• Add some wrappers for usual loops around strsep(3) #1155

  Adds an interesting set of wrappers around strsep(3), which significantly reduce code at call site.

• seprintf() and stpecpy() improvements. #1148

  Some improvements to sprintf(3)-like APIs.

• lib/, src/: Use consistent style using strchr(3) in conditionals #1048

  Some improvements of string-handling code.

• Move shadow APIs to lib/shadow/ #1197

  Organize the source code a little bit.

• X #1263

  Simplify a lot of code.

[ikerexxe]

The date looks good to me.

I would like to remove any yacc code and get the tests and documentation merged with it, so that will be my main focus.

[alejandro-colomar]

The date looks good to me.

I would like to remove any yacc code and get the tests and documentation merged with it, so that will be my main focus.

Nice! We got rid of it already. :)

I've rebased everything of mine after the tip of master.

(Oh, and with the yacc removal I return to having a net LoC removal of more than 1k in this project. I missed it for a long time!) :-)

[alejandro-colomar]

@hallyn , @ikerexxe , I'm going to add one to the top of the list:

• lib/get_pid.c: pid_t is a signed integer #1264

[alejandro-colomar]

I think we've merged enough of my patches for this release. The small one about pid_t would be nice to have, but the others we can leave them for after the release. And I'll also add the bugfix of today. I've edited the list.

[hallyn]

I will aim to cut an rc on sunday.