When built for Linux, libffi includes very bloated and workaround exec-alloc
implementation required to work around SELinux and other "sekuritee" features
which real people don't use. MicroPython has own alloc-exec implementation,
used to alloc memory for @micropython.native code. With this option enabled,
uPy's implementation will override libffi's. This saves 11K on x86_64 (and
that accounts for more than half of the libffi code size).
TODO: Possibly, we want to refactor this option to allow either use uPy's
implementation even for libffi, or allow to use libffi's implementation even
for uPy.
This actually saves "only" 6K for x86_64 build, as we're still more or less
careful to #ifdef unneeded code. But relying on --gc-sections in a "lazy"
manner would allow to make #ifdef'ing less pervasive (not suggested right
away, but an option for the future).
The time stamp is taken from the RTC for all newly generated
or changed files. RTC must be maintained separately.
The dummy time stamp of Jan 1, 2000 is set in vfs.stat() for the
root directory, avoiding invalid time values.
MicroPython own readline implementation is superior now by providing
automatic indentation and completion (completion for GNU Readline was
never implemented). MICROPY_USE_READLINE=2 also wasn't build for a long
time and probably broken.
If GNU Readline is still beneficial for some cases, it can be achieved
with external wrappers like "rlwrap" (there will be the same level of
functionality, as again, there never was deep integration, like completion
support).
That's arbitrary restriction, in case of embedding, a source file path may
be absolute. For the purpose of filtering out system includes, checking
for ".c" suffix is enough.
From https://github.com/pfalcon/berkeley-db-1.xx, which so far contains
pristine 1.85, but will get patches and compile warning fixes going
forward.
Berkeley DB 1.xx is BSD-licensed, and will form the basis of "btree"
simple database module.
Paul Sokolovsky
Robert HH