Re: GNUism in groff tests, was: pic anomalies

[Ingo Schwarze]

Hi Ralph,

Ralph Corderoy wrote on Tue, Dec 31, 2019 at 12:43:48PM +0000:

>>> For some version of POSIX.  :-)
> ...
>> But POSIX is actually unusually benign in this respect.  POSIX 2008 is
>> still in force and widely adopted (though of course, many commercial
>> UNIXes still implement POSIX 2001, but i doubt that's relevant in the
>> present context).  In a few years, there will probably be a new POSIX
>> standard

> Yes, there's the two you mentioned, and various updates to them.
> 
>     2001
>     2004  https://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/009695399/
>     2008  https://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799.2008edition/
>     2013  https://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799.2013edition/
>     2016  https://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799.2016edition/
>     2017  https://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799.2018edition/ [sic]

Yes, but these are merely Technical Corrigenda, correcting typos and
other minor erros, adding clarifications where confusion arose, and
the like.

Technical Corrigenda do not add new functionality and are not
supposed to change any APIs.

So of course following POSIX 2008 means following the 2018 edition,
but that's a really minor technicality, and it's very rare in
practice that 2008 vs. 2018 makes any difference regarding which
code is or isn't valid or what it's supposed to do.

> Anyone here know how much modern-day groff is compiled on old-POSIX
> systems?

Sorry, i'm not sure; but i tend to think POSIX 2001 (and older
systems) tend to also use old groff versions rather than the latest
and greatest, so i don't think we need to worry about them when
improving current groff.

Here are the most archaic systems i have access to:

   > uname -a
  SunOS unstable11s 5.11 11.3 sun4u sparc SUNW,SPARC-Enterprise
   > groff --version
  GNU groff version 1.22.2
  Copyright (C) 2013 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
  [...]

   > uname -a
  SunOS unstable9s 5.9 Generic_Virtual sun4u sparc \
    SUNW,SPARC-Enterprise-T5220
   > groff --version
  GNU groff version 1.21
  Copyright (C) 2009 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
  [...]

Yours,
  Ingo