Re: Files from gnulib

[Paul Eggert]

On 01/27/2011 02:54 AM, Simon Josefsson wrote:

> my impression is that gnulib has always been agreesive about
> abandoning support for platforms that are not commercially supported
> and that we can't access and test patches on.

I'm not sure what "aggressive" means, but the general rule is that we
try not to waste resources maintaining code that cannot easily be
tested and that increases the maintenance burden for ordinary
development.  Another way of putting it is, if the original platform
distributor no longer supports something, that's a good indication
that we shouldn't bother either, as it indicates that the audience is
too small to be worth committing our scarce resources to.

> For example, I believe SunOS 4 falls into this category.

SunOS 4 is still documented as being a target, though this
may change as per the above.  I personally haven't used
SunOS 4 in years; has anyone else?

> This could probably be clarified in the gnulib manual

Here's what it currently says.  Can you suggest which
clarifications would be helpful?

   Originally much of the Gnulib code was portable to ancient hosts like
   4.2BSD, but it is a maintenance hassle to maintain compatibility with
   unused hosts, so currently we assume at least a freestanding C89
   compiler, possibly operating with a C library that predates C89.  The
   oldest environment currently ported to is probably SunOS 4 + GCC 1.x,
   though we haven't tested this exact combination.  SunOS 4 last shipped
   on 1998-09-30, and Sun dropped support for it on 2003-10-01, so at
   some point we may start assuming a C89 library as well.

   ...

   Even if the include files conform to C89, the library itself may not.
   For example, SunOS 4's (free (NULL)) can dump core, so Gnulib code
   must avoid freeing a null pointer, even though C89 allows it.
   You can work around some of these problems by requiring the relevant
   modules, e.g., the Gnulib 'free' module supplies a conforming 'free'.