Re: Gnulib and pspdev

[Jim Meyering]

Bruno Haible wrote:
> Hello Sylvain,
>> The build is based on a slightly modified gcc
>> cross-compiler for mipsel, and a minimal libc on top off of newlib
>> (ftp://sources.redhat.com/pub/newlib/) - check 'psptoolchain' and
>> 'pspsdk' at
>> http://svn.ps2dev.org/listing.php?repname=psp&path=%2Ftrunk%2F .
>> ...
>> Can you tell me general guidelines to properly deal with these
>> compilation errors? Or is pspdev out of the scope of gnulib?
>
> gnulib's support is targeted at the systems which are in wide use and
> which are normally kept as-is for a couple of years. In your case, or
> similarly in for bugs in the Haiku kernel or in FreeMiNT or similar
> projects which are being actively developed, it's just as easy for
> the developers of that system to fix the bug or add the missing function
> than it is for gnulib to provide a workaround.
>
> The workarounds that are put into gnulib are there to stay. Every
> additional AC_CHECK_FUNCS or AC_CHECK_HEADERS invocation will slow
> down the configure process of a couple of packages a bit.
>
>> - using pathconf when HAVE_PATHCONF isn't defined:
>
> Well, you see from gnulib/doc/posix-functions/pathconf.texi that all
> Unix platforms have this function.

pathconf is a little different: while it is available on all Unix-based
system, mingw still lacks it.  mingw is useful enough that I'm willing to
impose the overhead of the single function-existence test.  Besides, the
"same" and "backupfile" modules already test for it, so any project
already using one of those will incur no penalty at all.