sys-libs/glibc installs libbsd.a in the standard libdir. It is a symbolic link to libbsd-compat.a This conflicts with the freedesktop libbsd (see bug #354271). Inspecting the glibc-provided one gives this: % nm /usr/lib64/libbsd.a dummy.o: 0000000000000000 T __dummy__ It would appear that this file is useless; there are no symbols. Since there now exists an ebuild for the freedesktop version, which does contain quite a few implementations of BSD-only functions, I think glibc should not install the libbsd.a link, and anything that needs to link against libbsd can require dev-libs/libbsd, which is more likely to work than the glibc provided one, anyway. Reproducible: Always
please dont go assigning bugs you arent responsible for i'm not dropping libbsd-compat.a, but libbsd.a is a Gentoo-specific artifact http://sources.gentoo.org/sys-libs/glibc/glibc-2.5-r4.ebuild?r1=1.18&r2=1.19 http://sources.gentoo.org/sys-libs/glibc/glibc-2.5.1.ebuild?r1=1.7&r2=1.8 http://sources.gentoo.org/sys-libs/glibc/glibc-2.2.5-r10.ebuild?r1=1.8&r2=1.9 http://sources.gentoo.org/sys-libs/glibc/files/eblits/src_install.eblit?r1=1.10&r2=1.11 http://sources.gentoo.org/sys-libs/glibc/files/eblits/src_install-2.6.eblit?r1=1.2&r2=1.3 http://sources.gentoo.org/sys-libs/glibc/files/eblits/src_install-2.11.2.eblit?r1=1.1&r2=1.2
fyi, upstream glibc is punting libbsd-compat.a now too, so it'll be gone starting in glibc-2.19
