safer way to use gnulib

[John W. Eaton]

On 20-Feb-2010, Jaroslav Hajek wrote:

| What do you think? It seems that in the current state of affairs
| gnulib actually makes Octave less portable than before.

Please see the following thread on the gnulib mailing list:

  http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-gnulib/2010-02/msg00113.html

The last method proposed in that thread would allow us to use gnulib
without having to modify Octave, and it would avoid the problems we
have with the rpl_ definitions.  But as Bruno Haible points out, it
may not be safe to include system headers inside a C++ namespace.  If
not, then we can still avoid most of the trouble with the rpl_
definitions, but we will have to prefix our uses of system functions
with a namespace tag like gnulib:: (or posix::).

Anyway, please read the thread and then we can discuss what options we
have for fixing the problems we've been seeing.

jwe