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Date:      Thu, 4 Apr 2002 00:24:28 -0500
From:      Mike Barcroft <mike@FreeBSD.org>
To:        Trevor Johnson <trevor@jpj.net>
Cc:        cvs-committers@FreeBSD.org, cvs-all@FreeBSD.org, Garrett Wollman <wollman@FreeBSD.org>
Subject:   Re: malloc.h--cheaper by the dozen?
Message-ID:  <20020404002428.B93859@espresso.q9media.com>
In-Reply-To: <20020331033829.Q20524-100000@blues.jpj.net>; from trevor@jpj.net on Wed, Apr 03, 2002 at 06:23:01PM -0500
References:  <20020331023459.G81971@espresso.q9media.com> <20020331033829.Q20524-100000@blues.jpj.net>

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Trevor Johnson <trevor@jpj.net> writes:
> Mike Barcroft wrote:
> > We don't support pre-ANSI C in 5.0-CURRENT.
> 
> Not supporting is one thing; actively sabotaging is another. Simply not
> having the header would be a more friendly way to not support it.  Is
> there an advantage to generating an error?  I don't see it.  We don't even
> save the one inode that we would save by not having a malloc.h at all.

We are actively removing __P(), or as you put it, actively sabotaging
K&R C.  It's easy enough to port old source to modern systems anyway.
C has changed very little in the last few decades.

> > Software developers have had over a decade to update their software to
> > more modern versions of C; I have no sympathy for them.
> 
> There's every likelihood that the authors of those programs no longer
> maintain them, that they don't care whether their code complies with
> standards, or that they don't care about FreeBSD.  Still, their work may
> be of use to FreeBSD users, who are the ones getting the error.

I have even less sympathy for these developers. :)  I think Kris has
finished correcting the ports collection, so only developers are
affected now.

> The Solaris version I mentioned dates from 1996.  The header is present in
> post-C89 versions of HP/UX
> (http://www.informatik.uni-frankfurt.de/doc/man/hpux/malloc.3c.html) and
> Tru64 (http://btrcx1.cip.uni-bayreuth.de/cgi-bin/manpages/malloc/3) as
> well as BSD/OS and FreeBSD 4.X.  The GNU libc contains it to this day
> (http://www.delorie.com/gnu/docs/glibc/libc_29.html).  They say it is from
> the SVID and XPG standards (although I could not find it in the SVID which
> Caldera offers for download).  Programs which do
> 
> 	#if HAVE_USR_INCLUDE_MALLOC_H
> 	#include "/usr/include/malloc.h"
> 
> are likely to fall into the booby trap.  If the header were just removed
> entirely, they could recover.

I agree with removing the header completely.  The additional
diagnostics probably don't assist many C programmers.

/usr/include/malloc.h:3: #error "<malloc.h> has been replaced by <stdlib.h>"

vs.

test.c:1: malloc.h: No such file or directory


Best regards,
Mike Barcroft

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