Re: heimdal on GNU HURD

[Thomas Bushnell, BSG]

"Jacques A. Vidrine" <n@nectar.com> writes:

> If the  Hurd will  not define  MAXHOSTNAMELEN nor  HOST_NAME_MAX, then
> indeed there really isn't a good  choice.  We'd have to use sysconf or
> _POSIX_HOST_NAME_MAX  or what  we `know'  _POSIX_HOST_NAME_MAX to  be.
> I think it's a pity.

You seriously think this is better?  You don't care at all about
providing the best system for users you can?  Why would you
deliberately choose an inferior solution?

> Actually, it has a few problems:
> 
>  = `xgethostname' is a poor name.

Change the name then.

>  = On that  same set of  systems, where  stupidly long host  names are
>    used, calling  xgethostname is expensive because  the function does
>    not keep track of how much memory it needed last time.

Oh please!  Call it once.  You really think this is a serious cost in
a program that is doing lots of encryption??

> I  could hardly  blame  the person  who  designed gethostname().   The
> interface has  worked quite well in  the real world, and  indeed POSIX
> has taken  the oppurtuntity to  standardize that interface.   The only
> problem is that this was  made a "possibly indeterminate" value, which
> IMHO was  a mistake,  albeit one  that it appears  we'll have  to live
> with.

It's not a mistake, it's a design principle: make nothing limited that
doesn't need to be.

That is also a GNU design principle.

> Regardless  of  these  academic  arguments,  I  guess  we'll  have  to
> implement something  like xgethostname just for  GNU/Hurd, since there
> doesn't seem to be any support here for following the rest of the UNIX
> world.

We are trying to avoid repeating the mistakes of the past rather than
slavishly repeating them.