Re: [PATCH] broken dd on systems without __fpending

[Paul Eggert]

Mikulas Patocka <address@hidden> writes:

> The correct fix would be to add __fpending to the libc

Yes, that sounds like a good idea, since everyone else who's done that
sort of thing has added <stdio_ext.h>.  I think Solaris did it first,
quite some time ago; see
<http://docs.sun.com/app/docs/doc/816-5168/6mbb3hr8p?a=view>.

> --- are there any programs that require it or is it just a performance
> optimization?

coreutils requires either __fpending or some way to get the info out
of the FILE datatype.  I think it's more to make it convenient to use
stdio correctly (checking for I/O failures) than for optimization.
This is part of gnulib, so other gnulib-using programs might require
it (I don't know).

Other applications (Emacs, Ruby, etc.) are like coreutils (though they
don't use gnulib here).  I think this is more for functionality.

LSB requires __fpending, not that that matters for FreeBSD.