1<html><body><pre>Bionic C Library Overview: 2========================== 3 4Introduction: 5 6Core Philosophy: 7 8 The core idea behind Bionic's design is: KEEP IT REALLY SIMPLE. 9 10 This implies that the C library should only provide lightweight wrappers 11 around kernel facilities and not try to be too smart to deal with edge cases. 12 13 The name "Bionic" comes from the fact that it is part-BSD and part-Linux: 14 its source code consists of a mix of BSD C library pieces with custom 15 Linux-specific bits used to deal with threads, processes, signals and a few 16 others things. 17 18 All original BSD pieces carry the BSD copyright disclaimer. Bionic-specific 19 bits carry the Android Open Source Project copyright disclaimer. And 20 everything is released under the BSD license. 21 22Architectures: 23 24 Bionic currently supports the ARM and x86 instruction sets. In theory, it 25 should be possible to support more, but this may require a little work (e.g. 26 adding system call IDs to SYSCALLS.html, described below, or modifying the 27 dynamic linker). 28 29 The ARM-specific code is under arch-arm/ and the x86-specific one is under 30 arch-x86/ 31 32 Note that the x86 version is only meant to run on an x86 Android device. We 33 make absolutely no claim that you could build and use Bionic on a stock x86 34 Linux distribution (though that would be cool, so patches are welcomed :-)) 35 36Syscall stubs: 37 38 Each system call function is implemented by a tiny assembler source fragment 39 (called a "syscall stub"), which is generated automatically by 40 tools/gensyscalls.py which reads the SYSCALLS.html file for input. 41 42 SYSCALLS.html contains the list of all syscall stubs to generate, along with 43 the corresponding syscall numeric identifier (which may differ between ARM 44 and x86), and its signature 45 46 If you modify this file, you may want to use tools/checksyscalls.py which 47 checks its content against official Linux kernel header files, and will 48 report errors when invalid syscall ids are used. 49 50 Sometimes, the C library function is really a wrapper that calls the 51 corresponding syscall with another name. For example, the exit() function 52 is provided by the C library and calls the _exit() syscall stub. 53 54 See SYSCALLS.html for documentation and details. 55 56 57time_t: 58 59 time_t is 32-bit as defined by the kernel on 32-bit CPUs. A 64-bit version 60 would be preferable to avoid the Y2038 bug, but the kernel maintainers 61 consider that this is not needed at the moment. 62 63 Instead, Bionic provides a <time64.h> header that defines a time64_t type, 64 and related functions like mktime64(), localtime64(), etc... 65 66 67Timezone management: 68 69 The name of the current timezone is taken from the TZ environment variable, 70 if defined. Otherwise, the system property named 'persist.sys.timezone' is 71 checked instead. 72 73 The zoneinfo timezone database and index files are located under directory 74 /system/usr/share/zoneinfo, instead of the more Posix-compliant path of 75 /usr/share/zoneinfo 76 77 78off_t: 79 80 For similar reasons, off_t is 32-bit. We define loff_t as the 64-bit variant 81 due to BSD inheritance, but off64_t should be available as a typedef to ease 82 porting of current Linux-specific code. 83 84 85Linux kernel headers: 86 87 Bionic comes with its own set of "clean" Linux kernel headers to allow 88 user-space code to use kernel-specific declarations (e.g. IOCTLs, structure 89 declarations, constants, etc...). They are located in: 90 91 /kernel/common, 92 /kernel/arch-arm 93 /kernel/arch-x86 94 95 These headers have been generated by a tool (kernel/tools/update-all.py) to 96 only include the public definitions from the original Linux kernel headers. 97 98 If you want to know why and how this is done, read kernel/README.TXT to get 99 all the (gory) details. 100 101 102PThread implementation: 103 104 Bionic's C library comes with its own pthread implementation bundled in. 105 This is different from other historical C libraries which: 106 107 - place it in an external library (-lpthread) 108 - play linker tricks with weak symbols at dynamic link time 109 110 The support for real-time features (a.k.a. -lrt) is also bundled in the 111 C library. 112 113 The implementation is based on futexes and strives to provide *very* short 114 code paths for common operations. Notable features are the following: 115 116 - pthread_mutex_t, pthread_cond_t are only 4 bytes each. 117 118 - Normal, recursive and error-check mutexes are supported, and the code 119 path is heavily optimized for the normal case, which is used most of 120 the time. 121 122 - Process-shared mutexes and condition variables are not supported. 123 Their implementation requires far more complexity and was absolutely 124 not needed for Android (which uses other inter-process synchronization 125 capabilities). 126 127 Note that they could be added in the future without breaking the ABI 128 by specifying more sophisticated code paths (which may make the common 129 paths slightly slower though). 130 131 - There is currently no support for read/write locks, priority-ceiling in 132 mutexes and other more advanced features. Again, the main idea being 133 that this was not needed for Android at all but could be added in the 134 future. 135 136pthread_cancel(): 137 138 pthread_cancel() will *not* be supported in Bionic, because doing this would 139 involve making the C library significantly bigger for very little benefit. 140 141 Consider that: 142 143 - A proper implementation must insert pthread cancellation checks in a lot 144 of different places of the C library. And conformance is very difficult 145 to test properly. 146 147 - A proper implementation must also clean up resources, like releasing 148 memory, or unlocking mutexes, properly if the cancellation happens in a 149 complex function (e.g. inside gethostbyname() or fprintf() + complex 150 formatting rules). This tends to slow down the path of many functions. 151 152 - pthread cancellation cannot stop all threads: e.g. it can't do anything 153 against an infinite loop 154 155 - pthread cancellation itself has short-comings and isn't very portable 156 (see http://advogato.org/person/slamb/diary.html?start=49 for example). 157 158 All of this is contrary to the Bionic design goals. If your code depends on 159 thread cancellation, please consider alternatives. 160 161 Note however that Bionic does implement pthread_cleanup_push() and 162 pthread_cleanup_pop(), which can be used to handle cleanups that happen when 163 a thread voluntarily exits through pthread_exit() or returning from its 164 main function. 165 166 167pthread_once(): 168 169 Do not call fork() within a callback provided to pthread_once(). Doing this 170 may result in a deadlock in the child process the next time it calls 171 pthread_once(). 172 173 Also, you can't throw a C++ Exception from the callback (see C++ Exception 174 Support below). 175 176 The current implementation of pthread_once() lacks the necessary support of 177 multi-core-safe double-checked-locking (read and write barriers). 178 179 180Thread-specific data 181 182 The thread-specific storage only provides for a bit less than 64 183 pthread_key_t objects to each process. The implementation provides 64 real 184 slots but also uses about 5 of them (exact number may depend on 185 implementation) for its own use (e.g. two slots are pre-allocated by the C 186 library to speed-up the Android OpenGL sub-system). 187 188 Note that Posix mandates a minimum of 128 slots, but we do not claim to be 189 Posix-compliant. 190 191 Except for the main thread, the TLS area is stored at the top of the stack. 192 See comments in bionic/libc/bionic/pthread.c for details. 193 194 At the moment, thread-local storage defined through the __thread compiler 195 keyword is not supported by the Bionic C library and dynamic linker. 196 197 198Multi-core support 199 200 At the moment, Bionic does not provide or use read/write memory barriers. 201 This means that using it on certain multi-core systems might not be 202 supported, depending on its exact CPU architecture. 203 204 205Android-specific features: 206 207 Bionic provides a small number of Android-specific features to its clients: 208 209 - access to system properties: 210 211 Android provides a simple shared value/key space to all processes on the 212 system. It stores a liberal number of 'properties', each of them being a 213 simple size-limited string that can be associated to a size-limited 214 string value. 215 216 The header <sys/system_properties.h> can be used to read system 217 properties and also defines the maximum size of keys and values. 218 219 - Android-specific user/group management: 220 221 There is no /etc/passwd or /etc/groups in Android. By design, it is 222 meant to be used by a single handset user. On the other hand, Android 223 uses the Linux user/group management features extensively to secure 224 process permissions, like access to various filesystem directories. 225 226 In the Android scheme, each installed application gets its own 227 uid_t/gid_t starting from 10000; lower numerical ids are reserved for 228 system daemons. 229 230 getpwnam() recognizes some hard-coded subsystems names (e.g. "radio") 231 and will translate them to their low-user-id values. It also recognizes 232 "app_1234" as the synthetic name of the application that was installed 233 with uid 10000 + 1234, which is 11234. getgrnam() works similarly 234 235 getgrouplist() will always return a single group for any user name, 236 which is the one passed as an input parameter. 237 238 getgrgid() will similarly only return a structure that contains a 239 single-element members list, corresponding to the user with the same 240 numerical value than the group. 241 242 See bionic/libc/bionic/stubs.c for more details. 243 244 - getservent() 245 246 There is no /etc/services on Android. Instead the C library embeds a 247 constant list of services in its executable, which is parsed on demand 248 by the various functions that depend on it. See 249 bionic/libc/netbsd/net/getservent.c and 250 bionic/libc/netbsd/net/services.h 251 252 The list of services defined internally might change liberally in the 253 future. This feature is mostly historically and is very rarely used. 254 255 The getservent() returns thread-local data. getservbyport() and 256 getservbyname() are also implemented in a similar fashion. 257 258 - getprotoent() 259 260 There is no /etc/protocol on Android. Bionic does not currently 261 implement getprotoent() and related functions. If added, it will 262 likely be done in a way similar to getservent() 263 264DNS resolver: 265 266 Bionic uses a NetBSD-derived resolver library which has been modified in 267 the following ways: 268 269 - don't implement the name-server-switch feature (a.k.a. <nsswitch.h>) 270 271 - read /system/etc/resolv.conf instead of /etc/resolv.conf 272 273 - read the list of servers from system properties. the code looks for 274 'net.dns1', 'net.dns2', etc.. Each property should contain the IP 275 address of a DNS server. 276 277 these properties are set/modified by other parts of the Android system 278 (e.g. the dhcpd daemon). 279 280 the implementation also supports per-process DNS server list, using the 281 properties 'net.dns1.<pid>', 'net.dns2.<pid>', etc... Where <pid> stands 282 for the numerical ID of the current process. 283 284 - when performing a query, use a properly randomized Query ID (instead of 285 a incremented one), for increased security. 286 287 - when performing a query, bind the local client socket to a random port 288 for increased security. 289 290 - get rid of *many* unfortunate thread-safety issues in the original code 291 292 Bionic does *not* expose implementation details of its DNS resolver; the 293 content of <arpa/nameser.h> is intentionally blank. The resolver 294 implementation might change completely in the future. 295 296 297PThread Real-Time Timers: 298 299 timer_create(), timer_gettime(), timer_settime() and timer_getoverrun() are 300 supported. 301 302 Bionic also now supports SIGEV_THREAD real-time timers (see timer_create()). 303 The implementation simply uses a single thread per timer, unlike GLibc which 304 uses complex heuristics to try to use the less threads possible when several 305 timers with compatible properties are used. 306 307 This means that if your code uses a lot of SIGEV_THREAD timers, your program 308 may consume a lot of memory. However, if your program needs many of these 309 timers, it'd better handle timeout events directly instead. 310 311 Other timers (e.g. SIGEV_SIGNAL) are handled by the kernel and use much less 312 system resources. 313 314 315Binary Compatibility: 316 317 Bionic is *not* in any way binary-compatible with the GNU C Library, ucLibc 318 or any known Linux C library. This means several things: 319 320 - You cannot expect to build something against the GNU C Library headers and 321 have it dynamically link properly to Bionic later. 322 323 - You should *really* use the Android toolchain to build your program against 324 Bionic. The toolchain deals with many important details that are crucial 325 to get something working properly. 326 327 Failure to do so will usually result in the inability to run or link your 328 program, or even runtime crashes. Several random web pages on the Internet 329 describe how you can successfully write a "hello-world" program with the 330 ARM GNU toolchain. These examples usually work by chance, if anything else, 331 and you should not follow these instructions unless you want to waste a lot 332 of your time in the process. 333 334 Note however that you *can* generate a binary that is built against the 335 GNU C Library headers and then statically linked to it. The corresponding 336 executable should be able to run (if it doesn't use dlopen()/dlsym()) 337 338 339Dynamic Linker: 340 341 Bionic comes with its own dynamic linker (just like ld.so on Linux really 342 comes from GLibc). This linker does not support all the relocations 343 generated by other GCC ARM toolchains. 344 345 346C++ Exceptions Support: 347 348 At the moment, Bionic doesn't support C++ exceptions, what this really means 349 is the following: 350 351 - If pthread_once() is called with a C++ callback that throws an exception, 352 then the C library will keep the corresponding pthread_once_t mutex 353 locked. Any further call to pthread_once() will result in a deadlock. 354 355 A proper implementation should be able to register a C++ exception 356 cleanup handler before the callback to properly unlock the 357 pthread_once_t. Unfortunately this requires tricky assembly code that 358 is highly dependent on the compiler. 359 360 This feature is not planned to be supported anytime soon. 361 362 - The same problem may arise if you throw an exception within a callback 363 called from the C library. Fortunately, these cases are very rare in the 364 real-world, but any callback you provide to the C library should *not* 365 throw an exception. 366 367 - Bionic lacks a few support functions to have exception support work 368 properly. 369 370System V IPCs: 371 372 Bionic intentionally does not provide support for System-V IPCs mechanisms, 373 like the ones provided by semget(), shmget(), msgget(). The reason for this 374 is to avoid denial-of-service. For a detailed rationale about this, please 375 read the file docs/SYSV-IPCS.html. 376 377Include Paths: 378 379 The Android build system should automatically provide the necessary include 380 paths required to build against the C library headers. However, if you want 381 to do that yourself, you will need to add: 382 383 libc/arch-$ARCH/include 384 libc/include 385 libc/kernel/common 386 libc/kernel/arch-$ARCH 387 388 to your C include path. 389</pre></body></html>