Re: doc update

[Simon Josefsson]

Eric Blake <address@hidden> writes:

> Simon Josefsson <simon <at> josefsson.org> writes:
>
>> 
>> My patch didn't illustrate my point correctly: my point was that,
>> according to Bruno (and my checks), we do know that at least Mac OS X
>> 10.5 implements the *_l functions, so arguable our documentation should
>> say that.
>
> I still think that's overkill.  Remember, the docs exist to show that there 
> are 
> known non-compliances with POSIX 2008, and what gnulib does about that.  We 
> don't have to list all the bugs, just enough of a sampling that a package 
> maintainer can consider using the gnulib module to work around those flaws.  
> In 
> other words, listing known negative cases is important.

Good point.

> But the list of platforms that implement POSIX 2008 will slowly grow over 
> time, 
> and as it does, we don't want to have to update the docs to list new positive 
> cases.  What happens when cygwin 1.7.2 (or whatever future version) 
> implements 
> locale_t and the *_l functions?  Do we have to sweep through the docs yet 
> again?  So, keeping the docs in their current state, of listing only negative 
> cases, seems okay to me.

The problem with this approach is that people will have only negative
information to decide when it would make sense to use a
gnulib-replacement module for a function, to deal with the platform that
doesn't yet implement it.

Personally, I think that if glibc, Mac OS X, cygwin and maybe Solaris
supported some interface I may want to start rely on it as a maintainer,
if I can get a replacement function into gnulib.  But if only glibc
supports an API, and there is no strong compelling reason to use it, I
may prefer to use POSIX interfaces instead.

/Simon