Re: Using Hurd features (was: Re: Hurdish applications for persistence)

[Bas Wijnen]

On Wed, Oct 12, 2005 at 12:42:05PM +0200, address@hidden wrote:
> Bas, and everyone else.  The whole point of the GNU system is to use
> its own features, it isn't to run on every platform out there.  This
> is simply not a goal of the GNU system, of which the Hurd is a crucial
> part of.

I wasn't talking about the GNU system, I was talking about random applications
that people will write.  Many people will want to write platform-independant
code, and I think that's a good thing.  Obviously, autoconf is a great help
there.  Note that autoconf is making a good argument that the GNU system isn't
so "egoistic" as you claim: It tries to make programs which are written for
the GNU system portable to other platfroms.

> So stop worrying about writting portable programs, and start
> abusing the features that the Hurd provides, and then use autoconf
> macros so that _IF_ another system supports a feature provided by the
> GNU system, it will magiclly work.

Using autoconf macros usually involves lots of #ifdefs around the include
files.  Creating a library (which may consist of only inline definitions on
the Hurd) which can be ported is a much more elegant approach IMO.

> I'll just quote the GNU Coding Standards:
> 
> ,----
> | In the Unix world, "portability" refers to porting to different Unix
> | versions.  For a GNU program, this kind of portability is desirable, but
> | not paramount.
> | 
> |    The primary purpose of GNU software is to run on top of the GNU
> | kernel, compiled with the GNU C compiler, on various types of CPU.  So
> | the kinds of portability that are absolutely necessary are quite
> | limited.  But it is important to support Linux-based GNU systems, since
> | they are the form of GNU that is popular.
> `----

This is about GNU software, that is software which is part of the GNU project.
It's not about random applications, which happen to run on the GNU system.

> So if everyone writes proper configure.ac scripts, all is good,

That's a big if.

> and if
> a system implements something that we have, the program will start
> using it automagiclly.
> 
> The problem with Linux specific hacks is that they don't check for
> _features_, they just assume that something exists.  Which is why
> Linux-specific hacks suck,

Platform-specific hacks suck in general.  Just writing autoconf macros doesn't
stop that.  It just makes it a bit more bearable.

> that and Linux is known to not care about API compabilitiy, we do.

That is one of the very good things about the Hurd, indeed.

Thanks,
Bas

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