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Re: new module 'regex-quote'


From: Reuben Thomas
Subject: Re: new module 'regex-quote'
Date: Wed, 29 Sep 2010 23:46:53 +0100

On 25 September 2010 11:58, Bruno Haible <address@hidden> wrote:
> It is a nice dream, but you have to know that the way for some feature
> into glibc is hard. Either you have to convince Ulrich Drepper, or you
> have to convince the Austin group. Making a fork in some GNU project,
> such as gnulib, is _not_ sufficient.

Equally, some such changes do eventually get in, but even if they
don't, making compatible changes to an existing API is, provided they
are convenient for programmers, better than dreaming up a new one.

>  - Deployment: If you want something to be inside glibc one day,
>    you need to put it into a library that will become obsolete on
>    those platforms with the newer glibc. Like libintl and libiconv.
>    If you put something into a library like libglib or libxml or
>    libunistring, it will never be inside glibc.

And I suppose since I was thinking of, at worst, a standalone library
which only extends APIs already in glibc, that would qualify for
something capable of inclusion.

> I don't find this alarming:
>  - The POSIX emulation part of gnulib is growing because we support more
>    and more POSIX functions. _Exit and tcgetsid are the newest ones.

That I can't argue with. But of course this is hardly unbounded
growth. At worst, gnulib could become a complete implementation of
POSIX APIs.

>  - The convenience part of gnulib is growing because gnulib is adopted
>    by more projects, and more people contribute to it. Latest additions:
>    'astrxfrm' and 'host-cpu-c-abi'. Do you see anything wrong with these?

Nor do I have a problem with these exact modules, although the
proliferation of "a" forms of non-"a" APIs is a pity, if hard to see
how to fix in C.

-- 
http://rrt.sc3d.org



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