Re: [PATCH] ftruncate: mark module as obsolete; even MinGW provides it, now

[Jim Meyering]

Paolo Bonzini wrote:

> On 04/09/2010 11:04 AM, Bruno Haible wrote:
>> Indeed. But since mingw has it but MSVC doesn't, this raises the
>> question: how important is the MSVC porting platform (use Microsoft's
>> compiler and include files [proprietary but downloadable at zero cost
>> from Microsoft's web site], with possibly a wrapper script like
>> 'cccl')?
>
> I think for mingwex-provided function we should not mark modules as
> obsolete outright; it depends on the amount of code and dependencies, IMO.

Hi Paolo,

Marking a module as "obsolete" is not that bad.
It merely makes gnulib-tool print a warning if a project uses
it explicitly, and inhibits inclusion when it would otherwise
be included via a module dependency (currently there are none in gnulib).

Other than Bruno's report, there has been no hint of a problem
since I wrote that AC_MSG_FAILURE-invoking configure-time check
for coreutils in June of 2006. The module came to gnulib in 2007.

On that basis, I still think that it is fine to remove
the module this year, as mentioned in its .m4 file.

Of course, if you have some precise -- and useful enough to count as a
reasonable porting target -- development environment in mind for which
this particular replacement is required, let us know.  That would serve
as reason enough to defer or even cancel the planned removal.

Jim