Re: gnulib broken on systems lacking fchdir

[Jim Meyering]

Matthew Woehlke <address@hidden> wrote:
> (...which, aside from the infamous NSK/OSS you've all come to hate me
> for :-) reportedly includes OS/2. According to "The Linux Programmer's
> Manual" (i.e. 'man fchdir'), "The fchdir call is compatible with SVr4,
> 4.4BSD and X/OPEN". Note the conspicuous absence of "POSIX".)

fchdir is specified by POSIX:

  http://www.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/009695399/functions/fchdir.html

> I also noticed that although there is a HAVE_FCHDIR (properly set in
> config.h), it is not being used.

Right.
I did a survey, some time ago, of reasonable porting targets, and all
had fchdir.  Eventually I should remove the test for fchdir, too.

> How needed are the *at functions?

They're pretty essential.
That's why there is a reliable emulation layer
(that falls back on fchdir-based savecwd.c) for systems
with neither the syscall nor the required /proc support.

> Can I rip them out? Can I emulate fchdir()?

You're welcome to try, but it's a big job.
I wouldn't bother.  Using an older version of coreutils might be
a good compromise.

> Is there some other way to achieve what fchdir() is being used for?

Not really.