Re: clean-temp and large files

[Bruno Haible]

Eric Blake wrote:
> Is there any reason that using the clean-temp module does not AC_REQUIRE
> ([AC_SYS_LARGEFILE]) in the configure script?  Without that, it is possible
> on some hosts that temporary files are artificially capped at 2GiB, even
> though enabling largefile support could make things behave otherwise.  As a
> result, there is a regression in M4 1.4.8 (1.4.7 used the mkstemp module,
> but 1.4.8 switched to clean-temp).

Hmm, I was assuming that invoking AC_SYS_LARGEFILE is the programmer's
responsibility, because AC_SYS_LARGEFILE is a global switch. (You can get
into trouble if you compile half of your library with and half without
the 64-bit settings. E.g. off_t is different, 'struct stat' is different.)

On the other hand, files in the range 2 GB - 4 GB are commonplace nowadays,
since they fit on a single DVD; therefore _not_ using AC_SYS_LARGEFILE can
be considered a bug.

The affected modules are not only clean-temp, but at least:
  mkstemp
  tempname
  copy-file
  clean-temp

Paul, what do you think? Is it gnulib's or the configure.ac's responsibility
to use AC_SYS_LARGEFILE?

Bruno