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Re: relicense module spawn-pipe


From: Or Goshen
Subject: Re: relicense module spawn-pipe
Date: Thu, 29 Aug 2013 10:37:19 +0300

Removed the use of error() in spawn-pipe


On Wed, Aug 28, 2013 at 7:53 PM, Eric Blake <address@hidden> wrote:
On 08/28/2013 08:19 AM, Or Goshen wrote:
> This patch will make the module usable from a library context, it will not
> call error() unless specifically asked to.
> Can you please apply it to the trunk

That depends on whether the patch is deemed reasonable; and if
non-trivial, you may also need to file copyright assignment with FSF.

> and ask the maintainer to relicense to
> LGPL ?

You already have.  But if Bruno doesn't reply, then we have to escalate
the matter to the FSF, supposing we can even come to an agreement on how
to accomplish it technically.

>
>
> call error() only if exit_on_error is set on all occations.patch

s/occations/occasions/

>
>
> diff -Naur lib/spawn-pipe.c lib.new/spawn-pipe.c
> --- lib/spawn-pipe.c  2013-08-21 18:47:16.645245700 +0300
> +++ lib.new/spawn-pipe.c      2013-08-28 17:11:49.769651100 +0300
> @@ -137,10 +137,12 @@
>
>    if (pipe_stdout)
>      if (pipe2_safer (ifd, O_BINARY | O_CLOEXEC) < 0)
> -      error (EXIT_FAILURE, errno, _("cannot create pipe"));
> +      if (exit_on_error) error (EXIT_FAILURE, errno, _("cannot create pipe"));
> +      else return -1;

This is not the preferred formatting style, which would look more like:

  if (pipe2_safer...)
    {
      if (exit_on_error)
        error (EXIT_FAILURE, errno, _("cannot create pipe"));
      return -1;
    }

Unfortunately, this patch still has a link-time dependency on error,
which means that gnulib-tool will still try to unconditionally pull in
the error module, which is incompatible with LGPLv2+.  To make this work
properly, you'd have to make the usage of error be conditional on a
pre-processor check of whether the module is in use, as well as modify
modules/spawn-pipe to no longer have a hard-coded dependency on the
error module.

On the other hand, since the code _already_ has instances of returning
-1 on failure, with errno set, it may just be simpler to blindly follow
that paradigm everywhere and just ditch the use of error() altogether
(rather than trying to make it conditional).

Next, note that it is not just the use of error() that makes the current
spawn-pipe.c code GPL; there is also a dependency on the fatal-signal
and wait-process modules, which in turn are using xalloc and error
modules.  Scrubbing this module to be clean from exit is a lot less
trivial than your initial attempt.

--
Eric Blake   eblake redhat com    +1-919-301-3266
Libvirt virtualization library http://libvirt.org



Attachment: Remove error().patch
Description: Binary data


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