Roland,
I'm CCing the gnulib list.
While discussing argp, Roland McGrath wrote:
> gnulib copies should not deviate in behavior, API,
> and ABI from the canonical functions in glibc; they should get only
> portability changes, and everything should be coordinated with the
> master sources in glibc.
The other gnulib participants can comment on this.
My 2 cents:
- gnulib attempts not to deviate from glibc, regarding the API.
- gnulib attempts not to deviate from glibc, regarding the behaviour of the
functions, except where glibc violates POSIX or is clearly broken by our
common judgement (examples: "[Bug libc/4586] printf crashes on some
'long double' values", or regex each time Paul finds a regex bug in glibc).
- gnulib does not make ABI guarantees. A function called 'foobar' in glibc
can very well be called 'rpl_foobar' in gnulib.
- Coordination between gnulib is glibc is hampered each time that the glibc
maintainers refuse to apply a portability patch (examples: libc bug entries
1054, 1220, 1241, 1281, 1285).
Citation from one of these bugs, from one of the glibc maintainers:
"I have no interest to waste my time on unsupported paltforms ..."
Bruno
