Re: GNU Coding Standards tools

[Ralf Wildenhues]

Hi ERic,

* Eric Blake wrote on Fri, Nov 07, 2008 at 10:09:15PM CET:
> I'm thinking of adding the following patch, so that all of the tools
> mentioned in GNU Coding Standards at least have a mention (our manual
> mentions more tools than GNU Coding Standards requires, but without
> this patch, it doesn't provide complete coverage).  We can add known
> portability problems later.  Thoughts?

Only non-serious ones.

> address@hidden @command{read}
> address@hidden -----------------
> address@hidden @command{read}
> +Not all shells support @option{-r} (Solaris @command{/bin/sh} for example).

How about the stronger: No options are portable, not even @option{-r} ...,
so readers of bash help are helped.  :-)

> address@hidden @command{mkfifo}
> address@hidden @command{mknod}
> address@hidden -------------------
> address@hidden @command{mkfifo}
> address@hidden @command{mknod}
> +The GNU Coding Standards state that @command{mknod} is safe to use on
> +platforms where it has been tested to exist; but it is generally portable
> +only for creating named FIFOs, since device numbers are
> +platform-specific.  Autotest uses @command{mkfifo} to implement parallel
> +testsuites.  Posix states that behavior is unspecified when opening a
> +named FIFO for both reading and writing; on at least Cygwin, this
> +results in failure on any attempt to read or write to that file
> +descriptor.

You haven't fixed this Cygwin limitation yet?  ;-)

> address@hidden @command{sleep}
> address@hidden ------------------
> address@hidden @command{sleep}
> +Using @command{sleep} is generally portable.  However, remember that
> +adding a @command{sleep} to work around timestamp issues, with a minimum
> +granularity of one second, doesn't scale well for parallel builds on
> +modern machines with sub-second process completion.

But you can use '-j20' to work around this issue.  :-)

Cheers, and thanks,
Ralf