[Bug-gnulib] Re: drop unlocked-io dependency in getline module?

[Simon Josefsson]

Bruno Haible <address@hidden> writes:

> Karl Berry wrote:
>> I know I am not looking forward to upgrading Texinfo to using
>> all the gnulib modules, precisely because of all those dependencies.
>
> What is it what disturbs you with the amount of dependencies? The maintenance
> work? Don't you trust the code? The size of the distribution? The time
> "configure" takes to complete?

For me it is that the dependencies create requirements on my code that
make things more complicated.  Some examples:

error: assumes the application add a symbol 'program_name'.  This is
difficult to do properly if my application is a library with its own
namespace.

malloc: add a #define malloc rpl_malloc which causes code in my
package that doesn't need gnulib to break during link.

unlocked-io (included implicitly by several modules): claims to be
thread unsafe.

alloca.c: depends on xmalloc, which I don't always want to use
(especially if just copy the file and use AC_FUNC_ALLOCA).

getopt: depends on gettext which adds ~15 additional files even if I
don't use gettext.

These are all low-level modules that are implicitly used by many
packages, so there are many other modules that are unusable for the
same reasons.

Being able to parametrize modules would be nice.

(Incidentally, I just stopped using argp and gnulib in gsasl because
of these and other problems...)