Re: timespec_get: port to Ubuntu 23.04

[Paul Eggert]

On 2023-07-28 08:06, Bruno Haible wrote:
> Do you remember how the user was supposed to determine
> which modules from time.in.h he needs to import?
> How did the GNULIB_PORTCHECK
> macro help doing that (or was supposed to help doing that)?

This is all old history and I had to look into the archives to refresh 
my memory. It dates back to around when mbscasecmp (of all things...) 
was introduced in 2007. In February 2007 I reported an issue with an 
older way of doing these checks:

https://lists.gnu.org/r/bug-gnulib/2007-02/msg00004.html

and in commit 9f62a12a18eacd2e289aa1acbc5d7280f332f5a8 you installed 
some "#ifdef GNULIB_POSIXCHECK" code for the first time:

https://lists.gnu.org/r/bug-gnulib/2007-02/msg00039.html

We had some back-and-forth about it. A few days later, when I responded 
to Simon's suggestion to dump time_r.h and just have code include 
time.h, I implemented something along those lines in commit 
3ac9552429c5a500717e1d3d129c32f7d0ea37a3, using GNULIB_PORTCHECK instead 
of GNULIB_POSIXCHECK:

https://lists.gnu.org/r/bug-gnulib/2007-02/msg00132.html

As I vaguely recall, I used the name GNULIB_PORTCHECK not 
GNULIB_POSIXCHECK because I thought some of the time.h portability 
issues were related to the GNU API rather than merely to the POSIX API.


> If the procedure turns out to be simpler than what we have documented at
> https://www.gnu.org/software/gnulib/manual/html_node/Finding-POSIX-substitutes.html
> then we have room for improvement on these 44 *.in.h file.
>
> If not, then I would suggest to align time.in.h with the other 44 *.in.h files.

The GNULIB_PORTCHECK mechanism, such as it was, long predates the 
current GNULIB_POSIXCHECK mechanism. To be honest I don't fully 
understand the latter mechanism (I imagine you're the only person in the 
world who does) and so don't know whether GNULIB_PORTCHECK is 
equivalent. If adopting GNULIB_POSIXCHECK for time-h would regularize 
things please feel free to do that.